Childhood Clive Staples Lewis was born in
Belfast in
Ulster, Ireland (before
partition), on 29 November 1898. His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), a solicitor whose father Richard Lewis had come to Ireland from
Wales during the mid-19th century. Lewis's mother was Florence Augusta Lewis Hamilton (1862–1908), known as Flora, the daughter of Thomas Hamilton, a
Church of Ireland priest, and the great-granddaughter of both Bishop
Hugh Hamilton and
John Staples. She was the first female mathematics graduate to study at
Queen's College Belfast. Lewis had an elder brother,
Warren Hamilton Lewis (known as "Warnie"). He was baptized on 29 January 1899 by his maternal grandfather in
St Mark's Church, Dundela. When his dog Jacksie was fatally struck by a horse-drawn carriage, the four-year-old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie. At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life. When he was seven, his family moved into "Little Lea", the family home of his childhood, in the
Strandtown area of
East Belfast. As a boy, Lewis was fascinated with
anthropomorphic animals; he fell in love with
Beatrix Potter's stories and often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. Along with his brother Warnie, he created the world of
Boxen, a fantasy land inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read from an early age. His father's house was filled with books; he later wrote that finding something to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass". {{Quote box|align=right|quote= The New House is almost a major character in my story. I am the product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstair indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age nine, when his mother died in 1908 from cancer. His father then sent him to England to live and study at
Wynyard School in
Watford,
Hertfordshire. Lewis's brother had enrolled there three years previously. Not long after, the school was closed due to a lack of pupils. Lewis then attended
Campbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but left after a few months due to
respiratory problems. He was then sent back to England to the health-resort town of
Malvern,
Worcestershire, where he attended the
preparatory school Cherbourg House, which Lewis referred to as "
Chartres" in his
autobiography. It was during this time that he abandoned the Christianity he was taught as a child and became an
atheist. During this time he also developed a fascination with European
mythology and the
occult. In September 1913 Lewis enrolled at
Malvern College, where he remained until the following June. He found the school socially competitive, and some of the fellow pupils of his house, such as
Donald Hardman, had mixed feelings about him. Hardman later recalled: He was a bit of a rebel; he had a wonderful sense of humour and was a past master of mimicry. I think he took his work seriously, but nothing else; never took any interest in games and never played any so for as I can remember unless he had to. ... I met him in Oxford after the war and noticed he had changed, but was staggered to find him the author of
The Screwtape Letters. When I knew him I can only describe him as a riotously amusing atheist. He really was pretty foul mouthed about it. After leaving Malvern he studied privately with
William T. Kirkpatrick, his father's old tutor and former headmaster of
Lurgan College. As a teenager Lewis was wonderstruck by the songs and legends of what he called
Northernness, the
ancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in the
Icelandic sagas. These legends intensified an inner longing that he would later call "joy". He also grew to love nature; its beauty reminded him of the stories of the North, and the stories of the North reminded him of the beauties of nature. His teenage writings moved away from the tales of Boxen, and he began experimenting with different art forms such as
epic poetry and
opera to try to capture his new-found interest in
Norse mythology and the natural world. Studying with Kirkpatrick ("The Great Knock", as Lewis afterward called him) instilled in him a love of
Greek literature and
mythology and sharpened his debate and reasoning skills. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at
University College, Oxford.
"My Irish life" Lewis experienced a certain
cultural shock on first arriving in England: "No Englishman will be able to understand my first impressions of England," Lewis wrote in
Surprised by Joy. "The strange
English accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons. But what was worst was the English landscape ... I have made up the quarrel since; but at that moment I conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal." From boyhood, Lewis had immersed himself in
Norse and
Greek mythology, and later in
Irish mythology and
literature. He also expressed an interest in the
Irish language, though there is not much evidence that he laboured to learn it. He developed a particular fondness for
W. B. Yeats, in part because of Yeats's use of Ireland's
Celtic heritage in poetry. In a letter to a friend, Lewis wrote, "I have here discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in, W. B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology." In 1921 Lewis met Yeats twice, since Yeats had moved to Oxford. Lewis was surprised to find his English peers indifferent to Yeats and the
Celtic Revival movement and wrote: "I am often surprised to find how utterly ignored Yeats is among the men I have met: perhaps his appeal is purely Irish – if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish." Early in his career, Lewis considered sending his work to the major
Dublin publishers, writing: "If I do ever send my stuff to a publisher, I think I shall try
Maunsel, those Dublin people, and so tack myself definitely onto the Irish school." After his
conversion to Christianity his interests gravitated towards
Christian theology and away from
pagan Celtic mysticism (as opposed to
Celtic Christian mysticism). Lewis occasionally expressed a somewhat
tongue-in-cheek chauvinism towards the English. Describing an encounter with a fellow Irishman, he wrote: "Like all
Irish people who meet in England, we ended by criticisms on the invincible flippancy and dullness of the
Anglo-Saxon race. After all, there is no doubt,
ami, that the Irish are the only people: with all their faults, I would not gladly live or die among another folk." Throughout his life he sought out the company of other Irish people living in England and visited Northern Ireland regularly. In 1958 he spent his honeymoon there at the Old Inn,
Crawfordsburn, which he called "my Irish life". Various critics have suggested that it was Lewis's dismay over the
sectarian conflict in his native Belfast which led him to eventually adopt such an
ecumenical brand of Christianity. As one critic has said, Lewis "repeatedly extolled the virtues of all branches of the Christian faith, emphasising a need for unity among Christians around what the
Catholic writer called 'Mere Christianity', the core doctrinal beliefs that all
denominations share". Paul Stevens of the
University of Toronto opined that "Lewis' mere Christianity masked many of the political prejudices of an old-fashioned
Ulster Protestant, a native of middle-class Belfast for whom British withdrawal from Northern Ireland even in the 1950s and 1960s was unthinkable."
First World War and Oxford University 1917. Lewis stands on the right-hand side of the back row. Lewis entered Oxford in the 1917 summer term, studying at
University College, and shortly after, he joined the
Officers' Training Corps at the university as his "most promising route into the army". From there he was drafted into a Cadet Battalion for training. He was depressed and homesick during his convalescence and, upon his recovery in October, he was assigned to duty in
Andover, England. He was
demobilized in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies. In a later letter, Lewis stated that his experience of the horrors of war, along with the loss of his mother and unhappiness in school, were the basis of his pessimism and atheism. After Lewis returned to Oxford, he received a
First in
Honour Moderations (Greek and
Latin literature) in 1920, a First in
Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922 and a
First in
English in 1923. In 1924 he became a philosophy tutor at
University College and, in 1925, was elected a
Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at
Magdalen College, where he served for 29 years until 1954.
Janie Moore During his army training, Lewis shared a room with another cadet, Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore (1898–1918). Maureen Moore, Paddy's sister, said that the two made a mutual pact that if either died during the war, the survivor would take care of both of their families. Paddy was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother, Janie King Moore, and a friendship quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was 18 when they met, and Janie, who was 45. The friendship with Moore was particularly important to Lewis while he was recovering from his wounds in hospital, as his father did not visit him. Lewis lived with and cared for Moore until she was hospitalized in the late 1940s. He routinely introduced her as his mother, referred to her as such in letters, and developed a deeply affectionate friendship with her. Lewis's own mother had died when he was a child, while his father was distant, demanding, and eccentric. Speculation regarding their relationship resurfaced with the 1990 publication of
A. N. Wilson's biography of Lewis. Wilson (who never met Lewis) attempted to make a case for their having been lovers for a time. Wilson's biography was not the first to address the question of Lewis's relationship with Moore.
George Sayer knew Lewis for 29 years, and he had sought to shed light on the relationship during the period of 14 years before Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In his biography
Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, he wrote: Later Sayer changed his mind. In the introduction to the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis he wrote: However, the romantic nature of the relationship is doubted by other writers; for example, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski write in
The Fellowship that Lewis spoke well of Mrs. Moore throughout his life, saying to his friend George Sayer, "She was generous and taught me to be generous, too." In December 1917, Lewis wrote in a letter to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves that Janie and Greeves were "the two people who matter most to me in the world". In 1930 Lewis moved into
The Kilns with his brother Warnie, Mrs. Moore, and her daughter
Maureen. The Kilns was a house in the district of
Headington Quarry on the outskirts of Oxford, now part of the suburb of
Risinghurst. They all contributed financially to the purchase of the house, which eventually passed to Maureen, who by then was
Dame Maureen Dunbar, when Warren died in 1973. Moore had
dementia in her later years and was eventually moved into a
nursing home, where she died in 1951. Lewis visited her every day in this home until her death.
Return to Christianity Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the
Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically "very angry with God for not existing" and "equally angry with him for creating a world". His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and a duty; around this time, he also gained an interest in the occult, as his studies expanded to include such topics. Lewis quoted
Lucretius (
De rerum natura, 5.198–9) as having one of the
strongest arguments for atheism: Lewis translated this poetically as follows: Lewis's interest in the works of the Scottish writer
George MacDonald was part of what turned him from atheism. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in Lewis's
The Great Divorce, chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical protagonist meets MacDonald in
Heaven: He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend
J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he seems to have met for the first time on 11 May 1926, as well as the book
The Everlasting Man by
G. K. Chesterton. Lewis vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a
prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape". He described his last struggle in
Surprised by Joy: After his conversion to
theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion during a late-night walk along
Addison's 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 that he would join the Catholic Church. Lewis was a committed
Anglican who upheld a largely orthodox
Anglican theology, though in his
apologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe that he proposed ideas such as purification of
venial sins after death in
purgatory (
The Great Divorce and
Letters to Malcolm) and
mortal sin (
The Screwtape Letters), which are generally considered to be Roman Catholic teachings, although they are also widely held in Anglicanism (particularly in
high church Anglo-Catholic circles). Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive
communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns.
Second World War After the outbreak of the
Second World War in 1939, the Lewises took
child evacuees from London and other cities into
The Kilns. Lewis was only 40 when the war began, and he tried to re-enter military service, offering to instruct cadets; however, his offer was not accepted. He rejected the recruiting office's suggestion of writing columns for the
Ministry of Information in the press, as he did not want to "write lies" to deceive the enemy. He later served in the local
Home Guard in Oxford. These broadcasts were appreciated by civilians and servicemen at that stage. For example,
Air Chief Marshal Sir Donald Hardman wrote "The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless. We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided just that." The youthful
Alistair Cooke was less impressed, and in 1944 described "the alarming vogue of Mr. C.S. Lewis" as an example of how wartime tends to "spawn so many quack religions and Messiahs". The broadcasts were anthologized in
Mere Christianity. From 1941 Lewis was occupied at his summer holiday weekends visiting
Royal Air Force stations to speak on his faith, invited by
Chaplain-in-Chief Maurice Edwards. It was also during the same wartime period that Lewis was invited to become first President of the
Oxford Socratic Club in January 1942, a position he enthusiastically held until he resigned on appointment to the
University of Cambridge in 1954.
Honour declined Lewis was named on the last list of honours by
George VI in December 1951 as a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) but declined so as to avoid association with any political issues.
Chair at Cambridge University In 1954 Lewis accepted the newly founded
chair in Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at
Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he finished his career. He maintained a strong attachment to the city of
Oxford, keeping a home there and returning on weekends until his death in 1963.
Joy Davidman In his later life Lewis corresponded with
Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer of
Jewish background, a former member of the
Communist Party USA and a convert from atheism to Christianity. She was separated from her alcoholic and abusive husband, the novelist
William L. Gresham, and came to England with her two sons, David and
Douglas. Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend, and it was on this level that he agreed to enter into a
civil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in Britain. They were married at the
register office, 42
St Giles', Oxford, on 23 April 1956. Lewis's brother Warren wrote: "For Jack the attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met ... who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humour and a sense of fun." After complaining of a painful hip, she was diagnosed with terminal
bone cancer, and the relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in the
Church of England at the time, but a friend, the Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at her bed in the
Churchill Hospital on 21 March 1957. Gresham's cancer soon went into
remission, and the couple lived together as a family with
Warren Lewis until 1960, when her cancer recurred. She died on 13 July 1960. Earlier that year, the couple took a brief holiday in Greece and the
Aegean; Lewis was fond of walking but not of travel, and this marked his only crossing of the
English Channel after 1918. Lewis's book
A Grief Observed describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that he originally released it under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief. After Lewis's death, his authorship was made public by
Faber, with the permission of the
executors. Lewis had adopted Gresham's two sons and continued to raise them after her death.
Douglas Gresham is a Christian like Lewis and his mother, while David Gresham turned to his mother's ancestral faith, becoming
Orthodox Jewish in his beliefs. His mother's writings had featured the Jews in an unsympathetic manner, particularly on
shechita (ritual slaughter). David informed Lewis that he was going to become a
shohet, a ritual slaughterer, to present this type of Jewish religious
functionary to the world in a more favourable light. In a 2005 interview Douglas Gresham acknowledged that he and his brother were not close, although they had corresponded via email. David died on 25 December 2014. In 2020 Douglas revealed that his brother had died at a Swiss
mental hospital, and that when David was a young man he had been diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia.
Illness and death In early June 1961 Lewis became afflicted with recurrent
nephritis which progressed to chronic low-grade
sepsis. His illness caused him to miss the autumn term at Cambridge, though his health gradually began improving in 1962 and he returned that April. His health continued to improve and, according to his friend
George Sayer, Lewis was fully himself by early 1963. On 15 July that year Lewis fell ill and was admitted to the hospital; he had a heart attack at 5:00 pm the next day and lapsed into a coma, but unexpectedly woke the following day at 2:00 pm. After he was discharged from the hospital, Lewis returned to the Kilns, though he was too ill to return to work. As a result, he resigned from his post at Cambridge in August 1963. Lewis's condition continued to decline, and he was diagnosed with
end-stage kidney failure in mid-November. He collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on 22 November 1963, at age 64, and died a few minutes later. He is buried in the churchyard of
Holy Trinity Church,
Headington, Oxford. His brother
Warren died on 9 April 1973 and was buried in the same grave. Media coverage of Lewis's death was largely overshadowed by news of the
assassination of John F. Kennedy, which occurred on the same day (approximately 55 minutes following Lewis's collapse), as did the death of the English writer
Aldous Huxley, the author of
Brave New World. This coincidence was the inspiration for
Peter Kreeft's book
Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley. Lewis is commemorated on 22 November in the
church calendar of the
Episcopal Church. ==Career==