Clive Staples Lewis
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3,509
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156
Books
6
Awards
C.S. Lewis wrote the seven-volume The Chronicles of Narnia between 1950 and 1956. He was an Oxford don and member of the Inklings literary circle alongside J.R.R. Tolkien. After a crisis of faith, Lewis re-embraced Christianity and wrote both Christian apologetics and science fiction. He died on November 22, 1963, from kidney failure, a week before his 65th birthday.
Names, aliases, and relatives of C.S. Lewis — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
C.S. Lewis by the numbers — life, work, and family.
C.S. Lewis — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland, to Florence Augusta Hamilton and Albert James Lewis. His mother died of cancer when he was a child, an event he later reflected in The Magician’s Nephew. He was homeschooled until age ten, learning French and Latin from his mother, then attended Wynyard School where the headmaster’s cruelty later landed him in an asylum.
Lewis published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950, the first of seven Chronicles of Narnia books. The series was inspired by his goddaughter Lucy and drew upon his knowledge of medieval literature and Christian theology. Earlier, he had launched his science fiction trilogy with Out of the Silent Planet in 1938, which Arthur C. Clarke later praised as among the few works of space fiction classed as literature.
Alongside his fiction, Lewis wrote Christian apologetics such as The Screwtape Letters, reflecting his own journey back to faith after abandoning Christianity following his mother’s death. He was a central figure in the Oxford literary circle the Inklings, which included J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and others.
Lewis married American writer Joy Davidman on April 23, 1956. She was dying of cancer, and their relationship allowed Lewis to express emotions he had suppressed since his mother’s death. He adopted her two sons, Douglas and David Gresham, making them heirs to his estate including Narnia royalties.
He was a lifelong friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, who based the character Treebeard partly on Lewis’s speech patterns. Lewis disliked his birth name Clive Staples from childhood and adopted the nickname Jack after his dog Jacksie died.
Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia have sold over 100 million copies and been adapted into multiple films, including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 2005. Author Neil Gaiman credited Lewis’s Narnia series with inspiring his own career after reading the books in 1988. Arthur C. Clarke lauded Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra as literature.
In 1956, Lewis received the Carnegie Medal for The Last Battle and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He died on November 22, 1963, a week before his 65th birthday, on the same day as President John F. Kennedy and writer Aldous Huxley. He is remembered for his imaginative Narnia series, his Christian apologetics, and his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien.
Every award, honor, and recognition received by C.S. Lewis — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
C.S. Lewis's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from C.S. Lewis — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
All That Is Not Eternal Is Eternally Out of Date.
In Arguing Against Him, You Are Arguing Against the Very Power That Makes You Able to Argue at All.
Christ Died for Men Precisely Because They Were Not Worth It; to Make Them Worth It
A Man Who Was Merely a Man and Said the Sort of Things Jesus Said Would Not Be a Great Moral Teacher. He Would Either Be a Lunatic on the Level with a Man Who Says He Is a Poached Egg or He Would Be the Devil of Hell. You Must Take Your Choice. Either This Was, and Is, the Son of God, or Else a Madman or Something Worse. You Can Shut Him up for a Fool or You Can Fall at His Feet and Call Him Lord and God. but Let Us Not Come with Any Patronizing Nonsense About His Being a Great Human Teacher. He Has Not Left That Open to Us. He Did Not Intend To. from Mere Christianity
Some People Seem to Think That I Began by Asking Myself How I Could Say Something About Christianity to Children; Then Fixed on the Fairy Tale as an Instrument, Then Collected Information About Child Psychology and Decided What Age Group I’d Write For; Then Drew up a List of Basic Christian Truths and Hammered Out ‘Allegories’ to Embody Them. This Is All Pure Moonshine. I Couldn’t Write in That Way. It All Began with Images; a Faun Carrying an Umbrella, a Queen on a Sledge, a Magnificent Lion. at First There Wasn’t Anything Christian About Them; That Element Pushed Itself in of Its Own Accord.
I’m More Welsh Than Anything, and for More Than Anything Else in My Ancestry I’m Grateful That on My Father’s Side I’m Descended from a Practical Welsh Farmer. to That Link with the Soil I Owe Whatever Measure of Physical Energy and Stability I Have. Without It I Should Have Turned into a Hopeless Neurotic.
Consequently Atheism Turns Out to Be Too Simple. If the Whole Universe Has No Meaning, We Should Never Have Found Out That It Has No Meaning: Just As, If There Were No Light in the Universe and Therefore No Creatures with Eyes, We Should Never Know It Was Dark. Dark Would Be Without Meaning.
When I Became a Man I Put Away Childish Things, Including the Fear of Childishness and the Desire to Be Very Grown Up.
I Know That Some People Say the Idea of a Law of Nature or Decent Behaviour Known to All Men Is Unsound, Because Different Civilisations and Different Ages Have Had Quite Different Moralities. but This Is Not True. There Have Been Differences Between Their Moralities, but These Have Never Amounted to Anything Like a Total Difference. If Anyone Will Take the Trouble to Compare the Moral Teaching Of, Say, the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, What Will Really Strike Him Will Be How Very Like They Are to Each Other and to Our Own.
We All Want Progress, but If You’re on the Wrong Road, Progress Means Doing an About Turn and Walking Back to the Right Road; in That Case, the Man Who Turns Back Soonest Is the Most Progressive.
It Is an Outrage That They Should Be Commonly Spoken of as Intellectuals. This Gives Them the Chance to Say That He Who Attacks Them Attacks Intelligence. It Is Not So. They Are Not Distinguished from Other Men by an Unusual Skill in Finding Truth nor Any Virginal Ardour to Produce Her…It Is Not Excess of Thought but Defect of Fertile and Generous Emotion That Marks Them Out. Their Heads Are No Bigger Than the Ordinary: It Is the Atrophy of the Chest Beneath That Makes Them Seem So.
What You See and Hear Depends on Where You Are Standing, and on What Kind of Person You Are.
When the Whole World Is Running Towards the Edge of a Cliff, He Who Runs in the Opposite Direction Seems to Have Lost His Mind.
For the Harem Is Always Accessible, Always Subservient, Calls for No Sacrifices or Adjustments, and Can Be Endowed with Erotic and Psychological Attractions Which No Woman Can Rival.
Among Those Shadowy Brides He Is Always Adored, Always the Perfect Lover; No Demand Is Made on His Unselfishness, No Mortification Ever Imposed on His Vanity.
In the End, They Become Merely the Medium Through Which He Increasingly Adores Himself. . . . After All, Almost the Main Work of Life Is to Come Out of Our Selves, Out of the Little Dark Prison We Are All Born In. Masturbation Is to Be Avoided as All Things Are to Be Avoided Which Retard This Process. the Danger Is That of Coming to Love the Prison.
And This Harem, Once Admitted, Works Against His Ever Getting Out and Really Uniting with a Real Woman.
The Homemaker Has the Ultimate Career. All Other Careers Exist for One Purpose Only and That Is to Support the Ultimate Career.
There Are Two Mistakes to Make with Devils. One Is to Ignore Them. the Other Is to Take Too Much Interest in Them.
As the Law Stands I Cannot Cut Down a Tree in My Own Garden with My Own Axe in Order to Make a Chair.
There Are No Ordinary People.. It Is Immortals Whom We Joke With, Work With, Marry, Snub, and Exploit.
There Are Two Equal and Opposite Errors into Which Our Race Can Fall About the Devils. One Is to Disbelieve in Their Existence. the Other Is to Believe, and to Feel an Excessive and Unhealthy Interest in Them. They Themselves Are Equally Pleased by Both Errors and Hail a Materialist or a Magician with the Same Delight.
You Are Never Too Old to Set Another Goal or to Dream a New Dream.
If Someone Offends You Greatly, Do Not Take Revenge. Wait, and Fate Will Do Everything for You!
Little-known facts about C.S. Lewis — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Treebeard’s character in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 2002 was partly based on Lewis’s speech patterns and personality aspects.
Lewis counted J.R.R. Tolkien as a close personal friend.
Lewis died on November 22, 1963, the same day as Aldous Huxley and President John F. Kennedy, from various illnesses.
The headmaster of his boarding school was a cruel tyrant later committed to an insane asylum; this experience led Lewis to frequently feature bad teachers and poor schools in his books.
The Narnia books were originally published in order of writing, starting with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950. Publishers later reordered them chronologically by story, beginning with The Magician’s Nephew, sparking debate over the correct reading order.
Lewis used foreign language words for Narnia characters: Aslan is Turkish for lion, and Jadis is French for of old, referring to the White Witch’s Old Magic.
Lewis based Ransom, the protagonist of his Perlandra trilogy, on his friend J.R.R. Tolkien.
Lewis married Joy Davidman, previously married to Bill Gresham, and adopted her two sons, David and Douglas, who inherited his Narnia royalties.
Childhood dislike of his name Clive Staples led Lewis to adopt the nickname Jack after his dog Jacksie died; fans often call him Jack Lewis.
Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for his goddaughter, Lucy.
Lewis was homeschooled until age ten; his mother taught him French and Latin, and his governess handled other subjects.
Lewis was a member of the Oxford literary circle the Inklings, alongside J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and others; fellow member Roger Lancelyn Green authored King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table.
Arthur C. Clarke considered Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra as among the few space fiction works classed as literature.
Lewis was portrayed by Joss Ackland in the 1985 film Shadowlands and by Anthony Hopkins in the 1993 adaptation.
Lewis allegedly declined a British knighthood for his literary services.
During World War I, Lewis served in the Somerset Light Infantry of the British Army.
Both actors who played Hannibal Lecter were connected to Lewis: Anthony Hopkins portrayed him in Shadowlands, and Brian Cox was originally set to voice Aslan before being replaced by Liam Neeson.
Lewis died a week before his 65th birthday.
Similar to Harry Potter, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had an American alteration: the wolf Maugrim was renamed Fenris Ulf. The sixth book, The Magician’s Nephew, tells Narnia’s creation and Professor Digory Kirke’s childhood.
Neil Gaiman became a fan of Lewis after watching the 1988 TV adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and then read the entire Narnia series.
The play Shadowlands about Lewis and Joy Davidman opened in London in 1989 starring Nigel Hawthorne and Jane Lapotaire, then moved to Broadway in 1990 with Jane Alexander. It was adapted from the 1985 TV film and later made into a 1993 film with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
Lewis advocated for carbolic-based aversion therapy as part of a moral crusader stance.
Lewis cited Scottish fantasy writer George MacDonald as his greatest literary influence.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about C.S. Lewis.
Celebrities similar to C.S. Lewis — same craft, ranked by reach.
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