C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a Belfast-born British writer, scholar and author of books on Christianity, best known for the seven Chronicles of Narnia, published between 1950 and 1956.

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast on 29 November 1898. He was a fellow and tutor in English at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1954, then held the chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, until shortly before his death in Oxford on 22 November 1963. His first book, the poetry collection Spirits in Bondage (1919), appeared under the name Clive Hamilton.

His science fiction Space Trilogy began with Out of the Silent Planet, published by John Lane, The Bodley Head, on 1 April 1938, and continued with Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945). His religious writing includes The Problem of Pain (1940), The Screwtape Letters (1942), Mere Christianity (1952, developed from wartime radio talks), the memoir Surprised by Joy (1955) and The Four Loves (1960). A Grief Observed (1961) was first issued under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk; Faber made his authorship public after he died.

For collectors. The Narnia first editions are the core of most Lewis collections. Geoffrey Bles in London published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on 16 October 1950, followed by Prince Caspian (1951), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), The Silver Chair (1953) and The Horse and His Boy (1954); The Bodley Head issued The Magician's Nephew (1955) and The Last Battle (1956). All seven were illustrated by Pauline Baynes. The first American edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, from Macmillan in 1950, was reset and carries three small textual changes by Lewis, so the UK and US firsts of that book differ.