See more
What were CS Lewis's last words?
“To begin with, may I congratulate you on writing such a remarkably good letter; I certainly could not have written it at your age,” Lewis wrote in his last letter.
Is CS Lewis still alive?
November 22, 1963C. S. Lewis / Date of death
Did Tolkien attend CS Lewis Funeral?
It was a Friday. Almost no one paid attention to the death of one of the most popular authors of a generation. This probably would not have fazed Lewis, though he may have found it disappointing that neither his brother Warren nor his close friend Tolkien attended his funeral.
What age did CS Lewis die?
64 years (1898–1963)C. S. Lewis / Age at death
Where is C.S. Lewis buried?
Holy Trinity Headington Quarry, Oxford, United KingdomC. S. Lewis / Place of burialThe grave of C.S. Lewis lies within the cemetery of the Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry just outside of Oxford.
What happened to C.S. Lewis wife?
In April 1960, Lewis took Davidman on a holiday to Greece to fulfil her lifelong wish to visit there, but her condition worsened quickly upon return from the trip, and she died on 13 July 1960. As a widower, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed which he published under the pseudonym of N. W.
Why did Tolkien and Lewis fall out?
Tolkien wrote in 1964, “We saw less and less of one another after he came under the dominant influence of Charles Williams,” a writer who Tolkien perceived as a wedge between himself and Lewis, “and still less after his very strange marriage.” That marriage was to Joy Gresham, unacceptable to Tolkien because she was ...
Did Tolkien like Narnia?
Tolkien hated the Narnia books, despite Lewis's avid sponsorship of Tolkien's own mythology, because he hated to see an imagination constrained by the allegorical impulse.
Which came first Hobbit or Narnia?
While Lewis published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – the first of his Chronicles of Narnia novels – in 1950, Tolkien's book The Hobbit came out in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings followed in 1954.
What does Lewis stand for?
The name Lewis is boy's name of English origin meaning "renowned warrior".
How did C.S. Lewis come up with Narnia?
In 1954 Lewis explained it this way in a letter to some Maryland 5th graders: "I said, 'Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that [Jesus], as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen. '"
What does C.S. Lewis stand for?
Clive Staplesstands for Clive Staples. Even though he is known as an English writer, he is actually Irish and was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During World War I, Lewis was a popular BBC broadcaster.
Did C.S. Lewis have a wife?
Joy DavidmanC. S. Lewis / Wife (m. 1956–1960)
Is the book becoming Mrs Lewis a true story?
First published in October 2018, Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan (Henry) is a work of historical fiction inspired by the life of New York writer Joy Davidman and her improbable love story with the Oxford don, and famous Christian author, C.S. Lewis.
Who was C.S. Lewis married to?
Joy DavidmanC. S. Lewis / Spouse (m. 1956–1960)Joy Davidman married Lewis, author of the beloved “Chronicles of Narnia,” at 41, and her late entrance into his bachelor existence is a cherished part of his legend.
What does C.S. Lewis stand for?
Clive Staplesstands for Clive Staples. Even though he is known as an English writer, he is actually Irish and was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During World War I, Lewis was a popular BBC broadcaster.
When did Lewis turn to Christianity?
Lewis turned to theism in 1930 (although Lewis misdated it to 1929 in Surprised by Joy) and to Christianity in 1931, partly with the help of his close friend and devout Roman Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien.
Who was Lewis married to?
Late in life Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American who had become a Christian in part through reading Lewis’s books. The two began a correspondence in 1950, while she was still married to writer William Gresham; by 1954 she and her husband, who had been unfaithful, were divorced, and she was living in England, becoming a close friend of Lewis. They wed in a secret civil ceremony in April 1956 to give her the legal right to remain in England. Six months later she was diagnosed with advanced cancer. In March 1957 they were married by an Anglican priest, who prayed that she would be healed. In what she and Lewis thought of as a miracle, her cancer went into a period of remission, allowing them several years of happiness together, until the cancer returned and she died, in July 1960. Under the name N.W. Clerk, Lewis published A Grief Observed (1961), in which he poured out his sorrow and spiritual doubt and outlined the stages he went through in his grief process. (The story of their relationship was fictionalized in Shadowlands, a 1985 made-for-television movie later revised for the stage [1989] and revised again into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger [1993].) In early 1963 Lewis wrote his last book, Letters to Malcolm, and in the summer of 1963 he retired from his post at Cambridge, a few months before his death.
What books did Lewis write about Christianity?
Other books explaining and defending Christianity include Miracles: A Preliminary Study (1947), Reflections on the Psalms (1958), and The Four Loves (1960). The posthumously published Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964), in which Lewis returned to the epistolary form, is a series of letters to an imaginary friend, Malcolm, dealing mostly with various kinds of, approaches to, problems arising from prayer, as well as other matters concerning liturgy, worship, and doctrine.
What was Lewis' father's education?
Reading and education were valued highly in the Lewis household. Lewis’s father, Albert Lewis, was a solicitor, and his mother, Florence Hamilton Lewis, graduated from the Royal University of Ireland (now Queen’s University Belfast) at a time when it was not common for women to earn degrees.
What was Lewis' first novel?
His first successful work of fiction was Out of the Silent Planet (1938), a novel into which Lewis wove Christian allusions and themes. It and many of Lewis’s later books were read aloud and critiqued at meetings of the Inklings, a group of fellow writers who influenced him significantly.
How did Lewis and Gresham die?
Lewis was full of happiness during the years of their marriage, though Gresham died of cancer in 1960. Lewis grieved deeply for his wife and shared his thoughts in the book A Grief Observed, using a pen name.
What happened to Lewis' mother?
Lewis' mother died when he was 10, and he went on to receive his pre-college education at boarding schools and from a tutor. During WWI, he served with the British army and was sent home after being wounded by shrapnel.
Who Was C.S. Lewis?
Writer and scholar C.S. Lewis taught at Oxford University and became a renowned Christian apologist writer, using logic and philosophy to support the tenets of his faith. He is also known throughout the world as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series, which have been adapted into various films for the big and small screens.
What did Lewis do to explain his spiritual beliefs?
He would go on to become renowned for his rich apologist texts, in which he explained his spiritual beliefs via platforms of logic and philosophy. Lewis began publishing work including Spirits in Bondage in 1919 and the satirical Dymer in 1926.
What did Lewis do in his life?
Lewis graduated from Oxford University with a focus on literature and classic philosophy, and in 1925 he was awarded a fellowship teaching position at Magdalen College, which was part of the university. There, he also joined the group known as The Inklings, an informal collective of writers and intellectuals who counted among their members Lewis' brother Warren and J.R.R. Tolkien. It was through conversations with group members that Lewis found himself re-embracing Christianity after having become disillusioned with the faith as a youth. He would go on to become renowned for his rich apologist texts, in which he explained his spiritual beliefs via platforms of logic and philosophy.
Who was Lewis' brother?
He was close to his older brother Warren and the two spent much time together as children. Lewis was enraptured by fantastic animals and tales of gallantry, and hence the brothers created the imaginary land of Boxen, complete with an intricate history that served them for years.
Who played Lewis' wife in Shadowlands?
Lewis' relationship with his wife, Joy, has also been depicted in Shadowlands, presented as a play and two films; one of the film versions was directed by Richard Attenborough and starred Anthony Hopkins as Lewis.
Who was Clive Staples Lewis?
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, ...
Who moved into the Kilns?
Lewis, the Moores, and later Warren, Lewis's brother, move into "The Kilns".
Who is the pseudonym for Grief Observed?
Publishes A Grief Observed under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk. Buy this book
Why did Lewis give up his job as an apologist?
In the last decade or so of his life, Lewis gave up being an apologist, feeling he had lost his knack. He concentrated more on the children’s stories and on more meditative stuff, such as a lovely book on the Psalms. His faith was challenged, though not shaken, by the painful cancer death of his wife, and this searing experience produced the heart-rending book A Grief Observed, which was the inspiration for the play (and movie) Shadowlands.
Who was Lewis' brother?
Warnie, Lewis’s collapsed brother, an unsuccessful army major, also shared the household, having frequent drinking binges. I was told by Walter Hooper, who served as Lewis’s secretary at the end of his life that the major could polish off three bottles of whisky in a day.
What did Lewis believe in?
In the course of this journey, he decided he believed in the Incarnation of Christ. He remembered his exultation as the two brothers walked together among bluebells.
Where is Lewis from?
He is from Northern Ireland, as Lewis was himself, and he is especially astute about drawing out the essentially Northern Irish qualities ...
Who was Lewis' girlfriend?
Lewis had already begun a relationship with Janey Moore, with whom he subsequently lived for the rest of his life. When I wrote my life of Lewis, I speculated, as others have done, that they must have been lovers—though this was always hotly contested in those days by some of Lewis’s more pious admirers.
Who was Lewis' roommate?
Lewis trained as an officer to fight in the First World War, and shared a room with a man called Paddy Moore. The two boys agreed that if either were killed in the war, the other would look after the dead one’s parent. Moore was killed.
Was Lewis a poet?
Until reading McGrath, I had never before been so struck by the fact that Lewis was a poet manqué. Of course I had known this—it is the most obvious fact about Lewis the writer. His earliest printed works were poems, but they were no good.
What happened to Lewis and Huxley during the moon speech?
By the time of Kennedy’s moon speech, both Lewis and Huxley were freshly acquainted with death. Like Lewis, Huxley lost his wife to cancer; he said it was like ‘an amputation’. He remarried but was diagnosed with cancer himself in 1960, and then stripped of almost all his possessions and papers in a house fire.
Who captured Lewis' voice perfectly?
Kreeft captures Lewis’s voice perfectly—or so Lewis’s friend George Sayer told him. I don’t pretend to know if Sayer was just being diplomatic, but I do know that Kreeft’ s Kennedy is so far off-key as to suggest the author had no more interest in capturing character than in providing a plot.
What happened on 22 November 1963?
The deaths of Lewis and Huxley were mute, private events, only reported in The Times three days later.
What happened to JFK's boat?
During a night operation in the Solomon Islands in 1943, the patrol torpedo boat he commanded was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Despite injury to his already long-damaged back, he performed heroically to bring his crew to safety. To his father Joe Sr, bent on seeing a Kennedy son succeed in politics, it was all capital—as valuable as the multi-million-dollar family fortune that greased the wheels of power. JFK used his PT boat drama as an excuse to publish a book in 1957, Profiles in Courage, which won a Pulitzer and did no harm to his 1960 White House campaign.
Who covered the killings of Oswald and Jack Ruby?
Hodgson also covered the killings of Oswald and Jack Ruby: Kennedy’s death was like a comet trailing others in its wake, right down to the waiter who had served him his last breakfast.
Did Henry II turn a blind eye to the CIA?
In classic Henry II style, he had turned a blind eye to CIA efforts to bump off Fidel Castro in Cuba, and as a realist he knew he too was certainly a potential assassin’s target. But of the three who died that day in November, only Kennedy had no time to prepare.
Who died in the Tangled History?
Tangled History. On November 22, 1963, three towering figures of the 20th century died. John F. Kennedy is the one that we all remember, but let’s consider the others.
What was Lewis's personal life like?
Lewis was what many social workers today would call a “caregiver.” His personal life was sacrificial in many ways, as he reached out to alleviate the suffering of others. When a friend was killed in World War I, Lewis took care of the friend’s widowed mother – and lived with her for life. His brother who had alcohol issues also lived with them. And when Lewis was 57, he married a woman who was dying of cancer. She also happened to be divorced, a mother of two boys. Before they were married, Lewis dedicated his masterpiece to her, the novel “Till We Have Faces.”
Why is Lewis's lecture "The Abolition of Man" so breathtaking?
And today people are more frequently consulting Lewis’s 1943 lecture “The Abolition of Man” because it’s so breathtaking in its prescience. In it Lewis warns about the debunking of objective reality in education, which amounts to the mocking of virtue and honor.
What is the purpose of the Screwtape Letters?
“The Screwtape Letters” would serve as Exhibit A on the exploitative nature of evil whenever it gets to cash in on human folly.
Who died on the same day as JFK?
JFK And C.S. Lewis Died On The Same Day: Whose Legacy Is Bigger?
Was Lewis an atheist?
Lewis had a knack for bringing the faith richly to life, clarifying it for any reader or listener to his BBC talks. And as a former atheist, Lewis knew the playbook of the opposition well, which was infuriating to his detractors. Many such detractors are still very busy today.
Was the killing of the President of the United States an earthquake?
The killing of the president of the United States was quite enough of an earthquake on its own. I grew up among staunch Democrats who detested Richard Nixon, but it would take maybe another week or so for me to sign on to the cult of the man and his martyrdom, after it was kneaded by the media into the culture.
Did Lewis and Kennedy have a public life?
Before they were married, Lewis dedicated his masterpiece to her, the novel “Till We Have Faces.”. Both Kennedy and Lewis had very public lives. Kennedy’s of course was a whole lot more so.
Why is Lewis on the cover of Time magazine?
The article on Lewis came out a few months after his latest book, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, was released. The reason for this honor was due to his popularity from his fictionalized correspondence between two demons in The Screwtape Letters. A casual look at the cover reveals this, as you see a pitchforked devil on his left shoulder and the wing of an angel over his head.
Who is credited with writing the books that Lewis wrote?
Early in his career, his first two books of poetry, Spirits in Bondage and Dymer, were both credited to Clive Hamilton (Clive is his actual first name and Hamilton is his mother’s maiden name). Then, before he died, A Grief Observed was published (in 1961) under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk. That book recounts some of the sorrow Lewis experienced after the death of his wife. It was republished the year after his own death with him identified as the author.
What was Lewis' first book?
It’s no secret Lewis enjoyed writing, but his original passion was poetry. In 1919, before his 21st birthday, his first book, Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics, was published. Nearly all of the book was written when he was 16 or 17 years old.
Who refused to teach at Cambridge?
As Alister McGrath recounts in C. S. Lewis: A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, after Lewis had twice declined the offer to teach at Cambridge, Tolkien wouldn’t let the matter go. He sought clarification from Lewis about why he refused the offer.
Who did Lewis and Janie King Moore live with?
When Paddy was killed in World War I, Lewis made good on his promise and lived with Janie King Moore until just before she died.
Did Lewis and Joy marry?
Most are aware Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, but did you know he tied the knot with her twice? The first time was on April 23, 1956, in a civil ceremony. He did it as a friendly gesture to prevent Joy from deportation from England (she was an American). Less than a year later, when it was thought she would soon die from cancer, he married her again at Churchill Hospital on March 21, 1957. So, why do it again? Few actually knew about the first wedding, so it was in part because he wanted to declare his love for her before others. This part of Lewis’s life was the subject of the movie Shadowlands that was first produced by BBC in 1985 and later a Hollywood movie in 1993.
Who Was C.S. Lewis?
Early Life
Teaching Career at Oxford and Wartime Broadcasts
- Lewis graduated from Oxford University with a focus on literature and classic philosophy, and in 1925 he was awarded a fellowship teaching position at Magdalen College, which was part of the university. There, he also joined the group known as The Inklings, an informal collective of writers and intellectuals who counted among their members Lewis' brother Warren and J.R.R. Tolkien. I…
Books and Film Legacy
- Lewis was a prolific author of fiction and nonfiction who wrote dozens of books over the course of his career. His faith-based arguments as seen in texts like The Great Divorce (1946) and Miracles (1947) are held in high regard by many theologians, scholars and general readers. His satirical fiction novel The Screwtape Letters (1942) is also a beloved classic. Lewis also continu…
'The Chronicles of Narnia'
- During the 1940s, Lewis began writing the seven books that would comprise The Chronicles of Narnia children's series, with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) being the first release. The story focused on four siblings who, during wartime, walk through an armoire to enter the magical world of Narnia, a land resplendent with mythical creatures and talking animals. Throug…
Marriage
- In 1954, Lewis joined the faculty of Cambridge University as a literature professor, and in 1956 he married an American English teacher, Joy Gresham, with whom he had been in correspondence. Lewis was full of happiness during the years of their marriage, though Gresham died of cancer in 1960. Lewis grieved deeply for his wife and shared his thought...