C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), English critic, scholar, and novelist, best known for his books dealing factually or imaginatively with religion. Lewis was one of the most popular and influential modern defenders of the Christian faith. His series of “Narnia” books for children retells the Christian story in fairy-tale form.

Born in Belfast, Ireland, on November 29, 1898, Clive Staples Lewis was the son of a lawyer. He was educated privately and at the University of Oxford. During World War I (1914-1918) he served as a second lieutenant in the British army and was wounded, hospitalized, and finally demobilized in 1918, when he returned to Oxford to complete his degree. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1923 and his master’s degree a few years later. A fellow and tutor at Oxford from 1925 to 1954, he was subsequently professor of medieval and Renaissance English literature at the University of Cambridge.

Lewis’s career as a writer began with two volumes of verse published under the pseudonym of Clive Hamilton: Spirits in Bondage (1919) and Dymer (1926). His first major critical work was Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936), which examines the connections between medieval literature and courtly love and established his scholarly reputation. His other major works in literary history are A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942) and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (a volume in the Oxford History of English Literature, 1955).

Lewis was better known to the general public, however, for books in which he examined and explained moral and religious problems. Reared as an Anglican, he became an atheist in his teens for personal and philosophical reasons and did not return to Christianity until his early 30s. His books and radio broadcasts appealed particularly to people who experienced religious uncertainties or who wished to see familiar beliefs stated in a fresh way. Works examining the beliefs of traditional Christianity, based in part on radio lectures he did for the British Broadcasting Corporation during World War II, included Beyond Personality (1940), Miracles (1947), and Mere Christianity (1952).

Lewis’s most popular book during his lifetime was The Screwtape Letters (1942), in which a senior devil named Screwtape sardonically instructs his apprentice nephew on the best way to tempt and destroy a young Christian convert. Lewis described his own conversion to Christianity in Surprised by Joy (1955). The Great Divorce (1945) is a modern prose equivalent of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Three of his novels—Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945)—form a memorable interplanetary trilogy dealing with the cosmic struggle between good and evil. A later novel, Till We Have Faces (1956), is a retelling of the story of Cupid and Psyche. Lewis died in Oxford on November 22, 1963.

One of Lewis’s most notable achievements was a popular series of children’s books known as the Chronicles of Narnia. The seven-volume series began in 1950 with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In addition to this volume, the best books of the series are The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle. A film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was released in 2005; production of a second Narnia film, Prince Caspian, began soon afterward for release in 2008.