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Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century and arguably the most influential Christian writer of his day. His major contributions in literary criticism, children's literature, fantasy literature, and popular theology brought him international renown and acclaim. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include The Chronicles of Narnia, Out of the Silent Planet, The Four Loves, Surprised by Joy, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity. C. S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, on November 29, 1898, Throughout his life, Lewis was known to his family and friends as "Jack"--a nickname he coined for himself at the age of four after the beloved neighborhood dog Jacksie died. Lewis's mother died of cancer in 1908 when he was just nine years old.
Lewis became an atheist at the age of 15, though he later paradoxically described his young self as being "very angry with God for not existing" Educated in private schools and with private tutoring, Lewis went on to receive a scholarship to University College, Oxford, in 1916. Lewis took a hiatus from study after the outbreak of WWI, enlisting in the British Army in 1917. On April 15, 1918, Lewis was wounded in the Battle of Arras and was discharged a little more than a year later in December 1919. On May 20, 1925, Lewis was appointed Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University, where he served for twenty-nine years until 1954. While at Oxford, Lewis was the core member of the now famous literary group "The Inklings." This group was an informal twice-weekly gathering of friends which included Tolkien, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Dr. Robert Havard, Owen Barfield, and Nevill Coghill, among others. Lewis was married late in life at age fifty-eight to Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer fifteen years his junior. They married in 1956, two years after Lewis accepted the chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, where he finished out his career. After a four-year fight with bone cancer, Joy passed away in 1960. Lewis continued to care for her two sons, Douglas and David Gresham.
Conversion to Christianity: You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.After his conversion to theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931. Following a long discussion and late-night walk with his close friends Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, he records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Church of England -- somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped he would convert to Roman Catholicism.
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