The mother of Lewis, who had mentored him in French and Latin, died when he was ten years old. After spending a year studying at Malvern College, a boarding school in England, he continued his private education under a tutor named WT Kirkpatrick, former head of Lurgan College.
During the first world war Lewis he served as a second lieutenant in the English army, interrupting his academic career which had begun in 1918 at the University of Oxford. Wounded in the war, he returned to Oxford, where he was appointed professor at University College in 1924. In 1925 he was appointed fellow and tutor at Magdalen College in England, where he lectured on English literature.
Letters from the devil to his nephew (1942), is perhaps the work for which Lewis is better known; it is a satire in which the devil, here known as Screwtape, writes letters teaching his young nephew Wormwood, how to tempt human beings to sin. Lewis published seven religious allegories for children entitled Chronicles of Narnia (1955). He also published several scholarly works on literature, including English literature in the 16th century (1954) and the Experiment in criticism (1961).
Even if Lewis published several works involving religion, he had lost interest in it very early in his life, and only later did he “convert” to Christianity, joining the Anglican Church. His autobiography, Captivated by Joy: The Way of My Early Life, does not explain what happened in his childhood. His director at the boarding school, a minister who urged him to “think” by hitting him, may have contributed to this change.
Lewis he became a professor of English at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1954. A highly cultivated person, his knowledge of literature made him in high demand, for his company and conversation. Lewis he enjoyed staying in the late hours of the day, in college classrooms, talking about literature, poetry, and religion.
In 1956 Lewis he married Joy Davidman Gresham, the daughter of a Jewish couple from New York. She was a graduate of Hunter College and had previously been married twice. When her first husband suffered a heart attack, she turned to prayer. Inspired by the writings of Lewis, she started attending church. Later, when I started writing to it Lewi, she divorced her second husband, Williams Gresham, and married the writer. She died about three years before her husband.
CS Lewis died at his home in Headington, Oxford, England, on November 24, 1963. An important collection of his works is in the hands of Wheaton College in Illinois.