The Life and Literary Accomplishments of C.S. Lewis

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C.S. Lewis is perhaps the best known Christian writer of the twentieth century. His fiction for children and adults and his writings as an apologist for Christianity are still widely read, enjoyed and discussed. A scholar of English literature, particularly Medieval and Renaissance, he was an Oxford don and Cambridge professor and also a writer of poetry. Lewis said of his reason for writing, “I wrote the books I should have liked to read, if only I could have got them” (Faces, vii). The editors of Time, in their preface to Till We Have Faces, wrote, “Fortunately for Western literature, C.S. Lewis was superbly endowed with the qualities that make a writer great: wit, wisdom and warmth; formidable erudition, which he never used for erudition’s sake; deep, at times uncomfortably deep, understanding of human nature; and above all, a robust and luminous imagination, the creative grace that Wordsworth called ‘the feeling intellect’” (Faces, vii). Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1898. He had one older brother, Warren, nicknamed Warnie. When Clive Lewis was about four years old, he announced to his family that his name was “Jacksie.” His refusal to answer to any other name meant that he was known as Jack by his family and friends for the rest of his life. His parents were of very different temperaments which he describes in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life: The two families from which I spring were as different in temperament as in origin. My father’s people were true Welshmen, sentimental, passionate, and rhetorical, easily moved both to anger and tenderness; men who laughed and cried a great deal and had not much of the talent for happiness. [My mother’... ... middle of paper ... ... Yours ever, C.S. Lewis (Letters, 44,45) C.S. Lewis died quietly in his home November 22, 1963, the same day as John F. Kennedy. He will live on his works for many generations to come. Workd Cited http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/people/cslewis_1.shtml#h17 Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed. Bantam Books: NewYork, 1976. Ibid. Letters to Children. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1995. Ibid. The Screwtape Letters. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996. Ibid. Surprised by Joy. Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc.: New York, 1955. Ibid. Till We Have Faces. Time Life Books: New York, 1966. Lurie, Alison. “The Passion of C.S. Lewis.” The New York Review of Books(NYRB): http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/feb/09/the-passion-of-cs-lewis.

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