Lewis, C(live) S(taples) (1898-1963)

English academic and writer, born in Belfast. He became a committed Christian in 1931 and wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven novels of Christian allegory for children set in the magic land of Narnia, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950).

His other works include the medieval study The Allegory of Love (1936) and the space fiction Out of the Silent Planet (1938). He wrote essays in popular theology such as The Screwtape Letters (1942) and Mere Christianity (1952), and the autobiographical Surprised by Joy (1955).

Lewis was educated privately, at Malvern College, and studied at University College, Oxford. During World War I he served with the Somerset Light Infantry. He was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1924-54 and professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge from 1954-63. His works of criticism include A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942), English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), and The Discarded Image (1964). His religious and ethical works include The Pilgrim's Regress (1933), The Problem of Pain (1940), Beyond Personality (1944), and The Four Loves (1960). There is a strong religious tone also in his science fiction which includes the trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, an account of an imaginary journey to Mars, Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). Lewis's long poem Dymer (1926) was published under the name Clive Hamilton. His Narrative Poems appeared in 1969.