He held academic positions in English literature at both Magdalen College, Oxford โ , and Magdalene College, Cambridge โ Lewis was a close friend of J. Tolkien , author of The Lord of the Rings. Both men served on the English faculty at Oxford University and were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings.
According to Lewis's memoir Surprised by Joy , he was baptized in the Church of Ireland but fell away from his faith during adolescence. Lewis returned to Anglicanism at the age of 32, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary layman of the Church of England ". Lewis wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularized on stage, TV, radio, and cinema.
His philosophical writings are widely cited by Christian scholars from many denominations. In , Lewis married American writer Joy Davidman ; she died of cancer four years later at the age of Lewis died on 22 November from kidney failure, at age In , on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis was honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. When his dog Jacksie was fatally struck by a horse-drawn carriage, [ 6 ] the four-year-old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie.
At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life. As a boy, Lewis was fascinated with anthropomorphic animals; he fell in love with Beatrix Potter 's stories and often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. Along with his brother Warnie, he created the world of Boxen , a fantasy land inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read from an early age. His father's house was filled with books; he later wrote that finding something to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass".
The New House is almost a major character in my story. I am the product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstair indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age nine, when his mother died in from cancer. Lewis's brother had enrolled there three years previously.
