Yet Lewis was a versatile writer whose academic studies have proven long-lasting and whose writings on religion have inspired generations of Christians. Indeed, all of Lewis's many writings are distinguished by the faith that the author adopted wholeheartedly in his early thirties, as well as by an imaginative felicity of expression and an intellectual depth that make them entertaining as well as thought-provoking.
Clive Staples Lewis was born in 1898 in Belfast, Ireland, where his father, Albert, worked as a solicitor. His mother, Flora, was a mathematician of sharp intellect and sunny disposition, and Lewis, who was known to the family as "Jack," enjoyed an early childhood filled with reading, drawing, and imaginative games with his elder brother, Warren. Unfortunately, Flora Lewis died of cancer when Jack was only nine, leaving him devastated. As he recounted in Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Life: "With my mother's death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasure, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis." Lewis was sent by his father to an English boarding school shortly after Flora Lewis's death, an abrupt transition that permanently soured the relationship between father and son.
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