British literary critic, scholar and author, known for his classic fantasy stories for children, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA (1950-1956), which shows the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien. During his literary career Lewis was also one of the most popular spokesmen for Christianity in the English-speaking world.

"I am a 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."

C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, as the son of A.J. Lewis, a solicitor, and Flora Augusta (Hamilton). His mother died when he was nine years old - Lewis had been very close to his mother and her death caused him acute anguish. After attending schools in Hertfordshire, Northern Ireland and Malvern, he was educated at home from 1914-17. From 1917 to 1919 Lewis served in the Somerset Light Infantry. In the course of his service he was accidentally wounded in the back. During his convalescence he met Mrs. Janie Moore, a much older woman. She was the mother of Edward Moore, with whom Lewis had shared rooms just a few weeks at Keble in the summer of 1917. Lewis lived with her until her death in 1951.

Lewis graduated from University College, Oxford, in 1923, and was fellow and tutor in English at Magdalen College, Oxford for nearly thirty years (1925-54). From 1954 to 1963 he was professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. With J.R.R.Tolkien and Charles Williams he formed a literary group called The Inklings, which took shape in the 1930s. Their Tuesday lunchtime sessions in the Bird and Baby pub became a well known part of Oxford social life. Williams died in 1945 and the meetings faded out in 1949. Other members of the club included Christopher Tolkien and Owen Barfield. Lewis preferred the company of men. He believed that women's minds were intrinsically inferior to men's.

As the autobiography SURPRISED BY JOY (1955) of his early life demonstrates, the watershed in Lewis's life was his conversion from atheism to Christianity. He started to publish popular religious books, among them A PILGRIM'S REGRESS (1933), a thinly disguised allegory of his own conversion, THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS (1942), a correspondence from a senior devil to his nephew concerning the latter's task of winning a young man to damnation, and THE GREAT DIVORCE (1945). THE PROBLEM OF PAIN (1940) suggested that pain may well be Satan's infection of God's world.

Lewis's literary criticism opposed classical, traditional, and purely literary values to the biographical, psychological, and impressionistic critic. He was the chief spokesman for the view that the good reader receives the text, it exert our senses, the bad reader 'uses' it - the text relieves our life but do not add to it. Among Lewis's most substantial books is ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (1954).

In OUT OF SILENT PLANET (1938) Lewis put his Christian beliefs in the setting of a science fiction story. The book started Lewis's Ransom trilogy, where the forces of scientism are in alliance with those of demonic evil. In the first part Ramsom is kidnapped by an amoral Wellsian scientist Weston, to Mars. The series continued in PERELANDRA (1943), in which an angel carries Ransom to Venus. In THAT HIDEOUS STRENGHT (1945) Ransom is back on Earth, and calls upon Merlin to fight against an unpleasant scientific organization, the NICE.

The Chronicles of Narnia has turned out to be the most lasting of Lewis's novels. It tells the story of a group of children, who come into contact with the mysterious other world of Narnia, where the lion Aslan is the prototype of Christ. The portal to Narnia is a wardrobe through which the four sibling children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy enter to a secondary world. In the first story the bad Witch is destroyed in a battle. In the sequels the children travel in Narnia and meet sea monsters, dragons, mermaids, wizards and other creatures. The final books deals with Narnia's beginning and end. In the last Armageddon story, with its death-and-resurrection theme, Narnia is laid waste and Father Time puts out the sun. Jill and Eustache appear from a railway train to help young Tirian, "last of the Kings of Narnia." The children realize that they were killed in a railway accident, and Narnia disintegrates. "The dream is ended; this is the morning," Aslan says.

Lewis was briefly married to Joy Davidman, a Jewish American divorcee. She died of cancer in 1960. The relationship was the subject of the film Shadowlands (1994), directed by William Nicholson, and based on a successful stage play. Lewis died on November 22, 1963.

For further reading: C.S. Lewis: A Biography, by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper (1974); The Inklings, by Humphrey Carpenter (1978); Shadowlands: The Story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, by Brian Sibley (1985); C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion by J. Beverluis (1985); Clive Staples Lewis by W. Griffin (1986); C.S. Lewis: A Biography, by A.N. Wilson (1990); The Fiction of C.S. Lewis by K. Filmer (1993); The Chronicle of Narnia by C.N. Manlove (1993); The Man Who Created Narnia by M. Coren (1996); C.S. Lewis: Christian and Storyteller by B. Gromley (1998) - See other fantasy worlds: Tove Jansson (The Moomintrolls), J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth

• SPIRITS IN BONDAGE, 1919 (verse as by Clive Hamilton)
• DYMER, 1926 (verse as by Clive Hamilton)
• THE PILGRIM'S REGRESS, 1933
• ALLEGORY OF LOVE, 1936
• OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, 1938 (Ransom Trilogy) REHABILITATIONS, 1939
• THE PERSONAL HERESY, 1939 (with E.M.W.Tillyard)
• THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, 1940
• A PREFACE TO 'PARADISE LOST', 1942
• THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, 1942
• THE WEIGHT OF GLORY, 1942
• BROADCAST TALKS, 1942
• MERE CHRISTIANITY, 1943
• PERELANDRA, 1943 (Ransom Trilogy)
• THE ABOLITION OF MAN, 1943
• BEYOND PERSONALITY, 1944
• THAT HIDEOUS STRENGHT, 1945 (Ransom Trilogy)
• THE GREAT DICORCE, 1945
• THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, seven novels starting with THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, 1950; PRINCE CASPIAN, 1951; THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DAWN TREADER', 1952; THE SILVER CHAIR, 1953; THE HORSE AND HIS BOY, 1954; THE MAGICIAN'S NEPHEW, 1955; THE LAST BATTLE, 1956
• ed.: GEORGE MACDONALD: AN ANTHOLOGY, 1946
• MIRACLES, 1947
• ed.: ARTHURIAN TORSO, 1948
• VIVISECTION, 1948
• TRANSPOSITIONS AND OTHER ADDRESSES, 1949
• THE LITERARY IMPACT OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION, 1950
• MERE CHRISTIANITY, 1952
• HERO AND LEANDER, 1952
• ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, EXCLUDING DRAMA, 1954
• SURPRISED BY JOY, 1955
• TILL WE HAVE FACES, 1956
• TILL WE HAVE FACES, 1957
• REFLECTIONS ON THE PSALMS, 1958
• SHALL WE LOSE GOD IN OUTER SPACE? 1959
• THE FOUR LOVES, 1960
• THE WORLDS LAST NIGHT, 1960
• STUDIES IN WORDS, 1960 (rev. 1967)
• A GRIEF OBSERVED, 1961 (as N.W. Clerk)
• AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM, 1961
• THEY ASKED FOR A PAPER, 1962
• THE DISCARDED IMAGE, 1964
• POEMS, 1964
• LETTERS TO MALCOM, 1964
• SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST, 1965
• LETTERS, 1966
• OF THE OTHER WORLDS, 1966 (ed. by Walter Hooper)
• STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE LITERATURE, 1966
• LETTERS TO AN AMERICAN LADY, 1967
• CHRISTIAN REFLECTIONS, 1967
• MARK VS. TRISTAN, 1967
• SPENSER'S IMAGES OF LIFE, 1967
• A MIND AWAKE, 1968
• SELECTED LITERARY ESSAYS, 1969
• NARRATIVE POEMS, 1969
• GOD IN THE DOCK, 1970
• THE HUMANITARIAN THEORY OF PUNISHEMENT, 1972
• FERN-SEED AND ELEPHANTS AND OTHER ESSAYS ON CHRISTIANTY, 1975
• THE DARK TOWER AND OTHER STORIES, 1977 (ed. by Walter Hooper)
• THEY STAND TOGETHER, 1979
• C.S. LEWIS AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE, 1979
• THE VISIONARY CHRISTIAN: 131 READINGS FROM C.S. LEWIS, 1981
• OF THIS AND OTHER WORLDS, 1982 (ed. by Walter Hooper)
• ON STORIES, 1982
• THE CRETACEOUS PERAMBULATOR, 1983 (ed. by Walter Hooper)
• THE BUSINESS OF HEAVEN, 1984 (ed. by Walter Hooper)
• LETTERS TO CHILDREN, 1985 (eds. L.W. Dorsett, M. Lamp Mead
• BOXEN: THE IMAGINARY WORLD OF THE YOUNG C.S. LEWIS, 1985
• PRESENT CONCERNS, 1986 (ed. by Walter Hooper)
• TIMELESS AT HEART, 1987 (ed. by Walter Hooper)
• THE ESSENTIAL C.S. LEWIS, 1988
• LETTERS: C.S. LEWIS AND D.G. CALABRIA, 1989 (ed. by M. Moynihan)
• ALL MY ROAD BEFORE ME: THE DIARY OF C.S. LEWIS, 1922-1927, 1991