Friday, August 26, 2011

The Ultimate Book Bash: C. S. Lewis Day

AAAAHHHH! It's the final day of The Ultimate Book Bash! A wrap-up post will be coming later, but for now...


Let's learn about C. S. Lewis.

His real name was Clive Staples Lewis, and he was born on November 29, 1898, in Ireland. (I'm glad  my middle name isn't Staples. The only thing that might be worse would be Scissors. ;P) His family knew him as Jack. As a child, Jack always loved the animals in stories like Beatrix Potter. In 1916, he got to go to University College, in England. It was there that he met Yeats. In 1917, he became an officer in the British Army, and served on the front lines in France.



In early 1918, he was wounded and two of his friends were killed. Back when he was 15, he decided to be an atheist. However, as time went by, the books that he read and the friends that he made (including J. R. R. Tolkien) influenced him back.



In Jack's later life, he met Joy Gresham, also a convert from atheism to Christianity. She had two young sons, David and Douglas. (Incidentally, Douglas Gresham hosted for Focus on the Family, on their tapes of The Chronicles of Narnia.) Joy and Jack were married in 1956, but sadly, Joy died from cancer in 1960. David and Douglas had been adopted by Jack, and he raised them as his own.



He had blood poisoning, because of inflamed kidneys, in 1961, and died on November 22, 1963.

1 comment:

Jujube said...

It's the C.S. Lewis Day! I understand why he wanted to be called Jack. Who wants to be called Clive Staples? Really? I didn't know Douglas hosted for FotF. Interesting...