World War I interfered with his academic career and a period in the trenches, ending with convalescence from a war wound, preceded his arrival at Oxford, to read classics, in 1919. To honour a pledge made to a fellow soldier named Paddy Moore, who did not survive the war, Lewis offered to support his mother, which he did by moving into her Oxford house where he lived with the mother and her daughter. Lewis lived there, and in another house when the Moores moved in 1930, until his own death.
At Oxford University Lewis achieved first-class degrees in both classics and English language and literature, and was eventually (in 1925) offered a fellowship and tutorship in English at Magdalen College. He continued to teach at Oxford for 30 years.
His religious views developed from agnosticism to Christianity, especially after a mystical experience of some kind in 1929. His account of this conversion appeared as “The Pilgrim’s Regress” in 1933.
A group of friends met regularly in his rooms from 1936 to 1939. Calling themselves the “Inklings” they included J R R Tolkien, whom Lewis encouraged to complete “The Lord of the Rings”.
Lewis wrote at first for an academic readership, notable titles being “The Allegory of Love” (1936) which explored the medieval concept of courtly love, and “A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’” (1942). However, with “The Screwtape Letters” (1940) he appealed to a wider audience. This is a series of imaginary letters between a senior and a junior devil, with the former explaining the best ways to corrupt human beings and cause them to fall into sin. Lewis also broadcast regularly on the BBC, and these talks were highly popular.
“Out of the Silent Planet” (1938) was the first of a trilogy of allegorical science fiction novels which had a strong Christian flavour. The other two were “Perelandra” (1943) and “That Hideous Strength” (1945).
Lewis’s academic career took an unexpected turn in the 1940s and 50s. He had hoped for a chair (professorship) at Oxford, but his evangelical views were probably what held him back. However, in 1954 the chair in English medieval and Renaissance literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, came up, and Lewis was persuaded to accept it. However, he still retained his Oxford links.
Lewis will always be best remembered for the series of seven children’s books that began with “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” in 1950 and culminated with “The Last Battle” in 1956. Lewis’s intention was to write the Christian story of sacrifice, resurrection, evangelism and final judgment in a way that children would accept, and he was clearly successful in this aim. The stories can be read simply as adventures, in the age-old tradition of good overcoming evil, without making any demands on a child’s religious susceptibilities. However, some writers, such as Philip Pullman, have found the Christian allegory to be too pervasive, and Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” is a deliberate counterblast, from an atheist perspective, to Lewis’s tales of Narnia.
C S Lewis’s name came to public notice for another reason many years after his death, namely the stage and film drama “Shadowlands”, the best-known version being the film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger (1993). This concerns the relationship between Lewis and Joy Gresham, an American writer, that coincided with the “Narnia” years. Mrs Gresham came to England in 1950 to escape a failed marriage and an alcoholic husband, and she and Lewis became friends. On her divorce, Lewis was happy to arrange a marriage of convenience so that she and her children would not be deported.
However, Lewis fell genuinely in love with her and was devastated when she died of cancer in 1960. The affair, and his sense of loss, were chronicled in “A Grief Observed” (1961).
Lewis did not outlive Joy Gresham by many years. He died in Oxford on 22nd November 1963, a week short of what would have been his 65th birthday.
© John Welford
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