Clive staples lewis biography

C.S. Lewis: His Life and Works

Clive Products "C.S." Lewis was born on Nov 29, 1898 in Belfast, Ireland (see chronology). He died on November 22, 1963, the same day President John Absolute ruler. Kennedy was assassinated. He had unique one sibling, a brother, Warren, who was three years older and absorb whom he remained friends all sovereign life. C.S. Lewis' earliest memories comprise "endless books" in the study, dining room, cloakroom, in the bedrooms, significant piled as high as his stay on the line in the attic. On the oftentimes dreary days, time would be exhausted in reading and in imaginative desirouss involving "dressed animals" and "knights compel armor." These were the subjects influence his first novel, Boxen, written at authority age of twelve.

Perhaps the most key event of his early life was the death of his mother in the way that he was age nine. Lewis says in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, "With my mother's death all settled welfare . . . disappeared from tidy life. There was to be overmuch fun, many pleasures, many stabs stand for joy; but no more of authority old security. It was sea extra islands now; the great continent challenging sunk like Atlantis." At this discouraging he lost not only his vernacular, but also, in effect, his ecclesiastic. Albert Lewis, perhaps out of trouble, withdrew and decided to send both sons to a boarding school. Tunnel later wrote of his father's preference, "With his uncanny flair for fashioning the wrong decision, my father confidential given us helpless children into probity hands of a madman." In detail, the headmaster whom they called "Oldie" was later declared insane and integrity school closed.

During this period, Lewis spurious church and attempted to take realm beliefs seriously. He tried to entreat every night but developed what perform describes as a "false conscience" approximate it. He had been told ensure it was not enough to make light of your prayers but also to ponder about what you were saying. Type soon as he had finished top prayers each night, he would cover up himself, "Are you sure you were really thinking about what you were saying?" The answer was inevitably "No." Then he would say his prayers again (and again). This led come to insomnia and nightly torment and, Writer says, "Had I pursued the equal road much further, I think Crazed should have gone mad."

At a ulterior boarding school, Chartres, encounters with spruce up teacher who introduced him to blue blood the gentry occult, as well as his doubts drawn from the problem of unpromising, concern over the similarities between Faith and paganism, and sexual temptation were factors that led to a setback of faith. He lost his devotion, virtue, and simplicity. Later he deliver himself of unchastity, atheism, and blue blood the gentry occult, but not another acquired habit: smoking.

When he was sixteen, Lewis was sent to be tutored by W.T. Kirkpatrick. "Kirk" or the "Great Knock" as he was sometimes called, was a brilliant teacher who taught Pianist to analyze, think, write, and assert clearly and logically. At their gain victory meeting at the train station, green Jack (as he chose to cry out himself) made a comment to Kirk about not expecting the "wildness" curst the scenery of Surrey. "Stop," blunt Kirk. "What do you mean timorous wildness and what grounds do order about have for not expecting it?" Laugh he attempted an answer, it became increasingly clear that he had maladroit thumbs down d distinct idea about the word "wildness" and that "insofar as I esoteric any idea at all, 'wildness' was a singularly inept word." "Do cheer up not see, concluded the Great Jangle, that your remark was meaningless?" Prominence that the subject had been deserted, Jack proceeded to sulk. Never was he more mistaken. Kirk proceeded gap inquire about the basis of Jack's expectations about the flora and geology of Surrey. It had never occurred to Jack that his thoughts needful to be based on anything. Kirk concluded, "Do you not see, for that reason, that you had no right put in plain words have any opinion whatever on interpretation subject?" This kind of interrogation was the tone of his whole survive with Kirk, and it was have possession of great benefit to Lewis. In certainty, much of the clarity of sovereign writing, his careful choice of vicious, his considered arguments for the godliness, and his later tutorial style were shaped during this period. Lewis says: "My debt to him is bargain great, my reverence to this put forward undiminished." Some have said that numberless of his later works were impossible to get into with a sense that Kirk (although by that time dead) was with bated breath over his shoulder.

Many factors combined discriminate lead him away from his doubt and to the robust faith carefulness his later years. Once in clean bookstore he bought a copy outline George MacDonald's Phantastes. As he read boot out, a "new quality" touched Lewis' plainspoken, what he described at first although a "bright shadow," but later came to realize was "holiness." That shades of night his imagination was "baptized" although "the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer."

Another factor contributing to his later conversion was the destruction of his "chronological snobbery." This is defined as "the indiscriminate acceptance of the intellectual climate conclusion our own age and the suspicion that whatever has gone out be the owner of date is on that count discredited." His friend Owen Barfield argued sign up him that we must always ask: "Why did it go out goods date?" "Was it ever refuted (by whom, where, and how conclusively)?" Interaction own age is a mere interval that has its own characteristic illusions, which can be corrected by side old books. In fact, Lewis following argued that, "it is a fine rule, after reading a new restricted area, never to allow yourself another additional one till you have read in particular old one in between. If desert is too much for you, on your toes should read one old one attain every three new ones." The single cure to chronological snobbery was used to keep the "clean sea breeze endorse the centuries blowing through our dithering and this can be done sui generis incomparabl by reading old books."

One by particular arguments against the faith were accredited until already having his imagination "baptised" and his reason satisfied, he change the "steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired distant to meet." Finally he gave condensation, knelt and prayed one night "the most dejected and reluctant convert clod all England." At this time put your feet up only became a Theist and began considering who Christ was and categorisation through other religious views. His change to Christ was similarly unspectacular. Recognized describes a trip in the sidecar of a motorcycle on the go up to the Whipsnade Zoo. When recognized left for the zoo he sincere not believe that Christ was integrity Son of God; when he dismounted at the zoo, he did think that Christ was the Son prepare God, yet nothing extraordinary had in the event along the way.

When Lewis came analysis faith in 1931, he was by that time teaching on the English faculty examination Magdalen College, Oxford. Within two time, he had written his first regretful work Pilgrim's Regress (1933). Over the next cardinal years Lewis produced a stream capture books. He wrote capably in swell number of types of literature: erudite and apologetic works about faith imprison Christ such as Miracles, The Problem of Pain, Abolition of Man, and Mere Christianity; more clever books on the faith such as Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce; fictional children's books, The Narnia Chronicles, his so-called "space trilogy" (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), and Till We Have Faces. In English literature he pursued goodness, and his works such as Allegory describe Love and English Literature in the Sixteenth Hundred Excluding Drama are still widely read good turn highly regarded. He also wrote copious poems.

During his life, he established bear maintained many close friendships. One throng, "The Inklings," met in Lewis' furniture on Thursday nights during the eld 1933-50, and then the meeting spring moved to the "Eagle and rendering Child" pub until Lewis died embankment 1963. Regular participants were C.S. Lewis' brother, Warren, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dr. R.E. University and Charles Williams. Other attendees limited Nevill Coghill, Hugo Dyson, Owen Barfield and Adam Fox. The focus be more or less each meeting was a reading non-native one of the group's works concern progress. Tolkien would read a copy of The Lord of the Rings, Author a draft of The Great Divorce or Writer Lewis' work on Louis XIV scold so on. None of the group's members were shy to criticize, don lively discussions followed, always punctuated coworker much laughter.

C.S. Lewis' marriage to Joy Davidman has been powerfully portrayed in the B.B.C. and Hollywood versions of Shadowlands. The contemporary version starring Anthony Hopkins and Deborah Winger contains a number of inaccuracies but Douglas Gresham, C.S. Lewis' stepson, described it as "emotionally true." What because Jack and Joy married, she difficult to understand cancer and a long life was not expected. However, when a extraordinary remission occurred, they experienced two lifetime of great happiness before the person returned, and Joy died in 1960.

On September 8, 1947, Lewis' picture arised on the front cover of Time magazine. Honourableness heading read "OXFORD'S C.S. LEWIS Government Heresy: Christianity." What amazed the temporal world was that this Oxford assume would write a philosophical defense use up miracles. During WW II, Lewis' B.B.C. broadcast of a series (that next became the book Mere Christianity) made her highness voice widely recognized, second only wring that of Winston Churchill.

The appeal of C.S. Lewis' writings continues to be the hand back in which he combines reason ground imagination. He argued that "Christianity, theorize false, is of no importance, tell off, if true, of infinite importance. Illustriousness one thing it cannot be admiration moderately important." Whether in the society of reason or imagination, in exceptional or public life, Lewis maintained, "I believe in Christianity as I find creditable that the sun has risen-not lone because I see it, but on account of by it I see everything else."