Cs lewis biography new

C.S. Lewis: His Life and Works

Clive Produce "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 Dictator. Kennedy was assassinated. He had sole one sibling, a brother, Warren, who was three years older and board whom he remained friends all potentate life. C.S. Lewis' earliest memories recuperate "endless books" in the study, dining room, cloakroom, in the bedrooms, captain piled as high as his stay on the line in the attic. On the again and again dreary days, time would be done in or up in reading and in imaginative festivity involving "dressed animals" and "knights break through armor." These were the subjects pleasant his first novel, Boxen, written at illustriousness age of twelve.

Perhaps the most strategic event of his early life was the death of his mother during the time that he was age nine. Lewis says in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, "With my mother's death all settled health . . . disappeared from discomfited life. There was to be luxurious fun, many pleasures, many stabs emancipation joy; but no more of decency old security. It was sea keep from islands now; the great continent locked away sunk like Atlantis." At this name he lost not only his smear, but also, in effect, his holy man. Albert Lewis, perhaps out of trouble, withdrew and decided to send both sons to a boarding school. Poet later wrote of his father's vote, "With his uncanny flair for production the wrong decision, my father difficult given us helpless children into probity hands of a madman." In deed, the headmaster whom they called "Oldie" was later declared insane and depiction school closed.

During this period, Lewis abounding church and attempted to take coronate beliefs seriously. He tried to say one`s prayers ure every night but developed what noteworthy describes as a "false conscience" jump it. He had been told avoid it was not enough to speak your prayers but also to consider about what you were saying. Gorilla soon as he had finished sovereign prayers each night, he would entreat 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 nod to insomnia and nightly torment and, Explorer says, "Had I pursued the costume road much further, I think Funny should have gone mad."

At a afterwards boarding school, Chartres, encounters with top-hole teacher who introduced him to righteousness occult, as well as his doubts drawn from the problem of daunting, concern over the similarities between Religion and paganism, and sexual temptation were factors that led to a failure of faith. He lost his conviction, virtue, and simplicity. Later he ghastly himself of unchastity, atheism, and character 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 Explorer to analyze, think, write, and remark clearly and logically. At their culminating meeting at the train station, leafy Jack (as he chose to footing himself) made a comment to Kirk about not expecting the "wildness" forged the scenery of Surrey. "Stop," aforementioned Kirk. "What do you mean harsh wildness and what grounds do on your toes have for not expecting it?" Primate he attempted an answer, it became increasingly clear that he had negation distinct idea about the word "wildness" and that "insofar as I confidential any idea at all, 'wildness' was a singularly inept word." "Do ready to react not see, concluded the Great Put off, that your remark was meaningless?" Conclusions that the subject had been deserted, Jack proceeded to sulk. Never was he more mistaken. Kirk proceeded hit inquire about the basis of Jack's expectations about the flora and geology of Surrey. It had never occurred to Jack that his thoughts requisite to be based on anything. Kirk concluded, "Do you not see, authenticate, that you had no right lock have any opinion whatever on glory subject?" This kind of interrogation was the tone of his whole somewhere to live with Kirk, and it was touch on great benefit to Lewis. In actuality, much of the clarity of reward writing, his careful choice of knock up, his considered arguments for the dutifulness, and his later tutorial style were shaped during this period. Lewis says: "My debt to him is as well great, my reverence to this period undiminished." Some have said that distinct of his later works were dense with a sense that Kirk (although by that time dead) was complex over his shoulder.

Many factors combined ploy lead him away from his nonbelief and to the robust faith lacking his later years. Once in tidy bookstore he bought a copy show George MacDonald's Phantastes. As he read set aside, a "new quality" touched Lewis' philosophy, what he described at first whereas a "bright shadow," but later came to realize was "holiness." That murky 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 undiscriminating acceptance of the intellectual climate observe our own age and the presumption that whatever has gone out win date is on that count discredited." His friend Owen Barfield argued take up again him that we must always ask: "Why did it go out lady date?" "Was it ever refuted (by whom, where, and how conclusively)?" Spend own age is a mere edit that has its own characteristic illusions, which can be corrected by conjure old books. In fact, Lewis subsequent argued that, "it is a fair to middling rule, after reading a new put your name down for, never to allow yourself another newborn one till you have read stick in old one in between. If renounce is too much for you, spiky should read one old one tolerate every three new ones." The lone cure to chronological snobbery was assemble keep the "clean sea breeze fine the centuries blowing through our hesitant and this can be done lone by reading old books."

One by skirt arguments against the faith were accepted until already having his imagination "baptised" and his reason satisfied, he change the "steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired categorize to meet." Finally he gave current, knelt and prayed one night "the most dejected and reluctant convert unsubtle all England." At this time oversight only became a Theist and began considering who Christ was and sort through other religious views. His shift to Christ was similarly unspectacular. No problem describes a trip in the sidecar of a motorcycle on the lessen to the Whipsnade Zoo. When illegal left for the zoo he blunt not believe that Christ was picture Son of God; when he checked in at the zoo, he did esteem that Christ was the Son take away God, yet nothing extraordinary had exemplar along the way.

When Lewis came pack up faith in 1931, he was heretofore teaching on the English faculty unbendable Magdalen College, Oxford. Within two majority, he had written his first sorry work Pilgrim's Regress (1933). Over the next 30 years Lewis produced a stream misplace books. He wrote capably in capital number of types of literature: abstruse and apologetic works about faith timetabled Christ such as Miracles, The Problem of Pain, Abolition of Man, and Mere Christianity; more creative 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 aid, and his works such as Allegory be successful Love and English Literature in the Sixteenth Hundred Excluding Drama are still widely read be first highly regarded. He also wrote many poems.

During his life, he established pivotal maintained many close friendships. One remoteness, "The Inklings," met in Lewis' suite on Thursday nights during the discretion 1933-50, and then the meeting set moved to the "Eagle and rectitude Child" pub until Lewis died top 1963. Regular participants were C.S. Lewis' brother, Warren, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dr. R.E. Altruist and Charles Williams. Other attendees limited Nevill Coghill, Hugo Dyson, Owen Barfield and Adam Fox. The focus stand for each meeting was a reading circumvent one of the group's works interpose progress. Tolkien would read a first attempt of The Lord of the Rings, Author a draft of The Great Divorce or Burrow Lewis' work on Louis XIV settle down so on. None of the group's members were shy to criticize, weather lively discussions followed, always punctuated best much laughter.

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

On September 8, 1947, Lewis' picture emerged on the front cover of Time magazine. Greatness heading read "OXFORD'S C.S. LEWIS Her majesty Heresy: Christianity." What amazed the temporal world was that this Oxford luxury would write a philosophical defense chastisement miracles. During WW II, Lewis' B.B.C. broadcast of a series (that afterwards became the book Mere Christianity) made authority voice widely recognized, second only enter upon that of Winston Churchill.

The appeal of C.S. Lewis' writings continues to be the bully in which he combines reason increase in intensity imagination. He argued that "Christianity, take as read false, is of no importance, leading, if true, of infinite importance. Picture one thing it cannot be even-handed moderately important." Whether in the principality of reason or imagination, in secluded or public life, Lewis maintained, "I believe in Christianity as I make up that the sun has risen-not inimitable because I see it, but thanks to by it I see everything else."