Biography Clive Staples Lewis

Poet Biography

Clive Staples (Jack) Lewis was born in Ireland, in Belfast on 29 November 1898. On volunteeringand serving in the army he was wounded in 1917 fighting in the trenches during World War 1. After the war, he attended university at Oxford. Soon, he found himself on the faculty of Magdalen College where he taught Mediaeval and Renaissance English. The wound he received in the First World War would affect him physically throughout his life, yet the Second World War had a more profound effect on his writing. The new mechanised and bureaucratised society that rose up during the war years held a fascination for him.

His witty observations on it can be perused in the "Screwtape Letters", one of his most famous works, along with 'The Chronicles of Narnia'. For much of his life, C. S. Lewis was a member of a brilliant if informal society called the Inklings. They frequently gathered together in a small pub in Oxford. Other members of this group included J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and Charles Williams. Lewis died in 1963.