A Brief Guide to C. S. Lewis: From Mere Christianity to Narnia

An engaging guide to the life and work of the unassuming scholar who opened the door to the magical world of Narnia

Clive Staples ‘Jack’ Lewis’s death on 22 November 1963 was overshadowed by the shock assassination on the same day of US President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Fifty years later, he has been properly honoured with a memorial in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Simpson charts Lewis’s journey from religion to atheism, then, under the influence of his friend J. R. R. Tolkien, through theism to Christianity; the author’s marriage to the American writer Joy Davidman Gresham; and his battle with cancer. He discusses Lewis’s fiction, not only the Narnia series for which he is most famous, but also less well-known works such as the science-fiction trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, and his remarkably accessible religious writings – many of them written originally as talks for radio – from The Screwtape Letters to Mere Christianity.

Most companions to Lewis’s work have been written from a religious perspective. This guide assumes no biblical scholarship; the focus is on what Lewis wrote rather than the specific texts that he dissects. Considerations of the many adaptations of Lewis’s stories on stage and screen are enlivened by fresh interviews with some of their creators.