C. S. Lewis Biography

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe About the Author

Clive Staples Lewis was born November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Ireland. He attended English public schools (the same as private schools in America).

Although he won a scholarship to Oxford University in 1916, he did not pass his elementary mathematics examination. During World War I he served in the British army as an infantry lieutenant and was wounded in battle.

Following the war he was accepted at Oxford.

While a student, he published his first work, Spirits in Bondage (1919), a book of poetry. Originally an atheist, Lewis underwent a slow but profound spiritual change during the 1920s. By 1929, he was convinced that his scholarly studies led to conclusive proof that God existed.

He would later incorporate his views on Christianity, morality, and the modern world into various works of fiction and nonfiction. He died on November 22, 1963, in Oxford,...
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