C.S. Lewis

            Clive Staples Lewis was born to a Protestant family on November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Ireland.  As a toddler, Lewis decided that he liked the name Jack so that is what his friends and family called him from then on (C.S. Lewis Biography).  Lewis was born into a family of book lovers.  He remembers there being books in almost every room of the house and unlike many other young child, he was allowed to handle every single book.  Lewis spent a large portion of his time reading and creating a fantasy land.  These activities greatly increased after his only brother, Warren, was sent off to boarding school in 1905.  After this event, Lewis became very reclusive and started to write and illustrate his own stories.  In 1908, Lewis’s mother died of cancer.  The passing of his mother came just months before his tenth birthday and greatly affected him.  It was that along with the added influence from a boarding school matron that pushed Lewis to reject Christianity and become an atheist (C.S. Lewis).

            C.S. Lewis started at Oxford in 1917 and was there for most of life, both as a student and teacher.  He graduated with a focus in literature and philosophy.  In 1919 Lewis published his first book, Spirits in Bondage under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.  The following year he was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, an Oxford college, where he tutored in English language and literature.  It was there that he joined a group of informal writers called The Inklings.  While in the group he realized that most of the members where Christians.  Through conversation with the Christian members of The Inklings, he eventually found himself accepting Christianity again. 

            After becoming a Christian, Lewis switched the path of his writing career.  He no longer wanted to be a poet.  Instead he wanted to write pieces that reflected his new found faith.  Lewis published The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism in 1933, just two short years after his conversion.  That book paved the way for a life of books on Christian apologetics and discipleship.

            C.S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963, just one week before his 65^th birthday.  He had suffered from various illnesses for the two years prior to his death but was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure mid-November, 1963.

References:
http://www.biography.com/people/cs-lewis-9380969
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/musiciansartistsandwriters/cs-lewis.html

Written by: Renee Pachan