C. S. Lewis: A Biography (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Clive Staples Lewis was born on 29 November 1898 in the city of Belfast..." (more)
Key Phrases: silent planet, Albert Lewis, Arthur Greeves, English Faculty (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One might see the life of Christian apologist Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) as a Freudian case history. As an Oxford undergrad, he took up with Janie Moore, 25 years his senior, whom he passed off as his "adopted mother"; she filled a gap left by the death of his mother when he was nine. When Moore, his companion for over 30 years, died, Lewis married Joy Davidman, an aspiring poet-novelist dying of cancer who had two small sons--her circumstances parallel to those of Lewis's own mother. Wilson ( Tolstoy ), though attuned to psychoanalytic theory, avoids reductionist psychobiography in this absorbing, intimate portrait of a secretive figure. He presents Lewis as a Romantic egoist in the tradition of Wordsworth and Yeats, as a seeker who transformed his obsession with childhood memories into moral fables for our age. Primary sources yield fresh insights into Lewis's Oxford circle, the Inklings, and particularly into his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien. Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

More probing than the affectionate biographies now available, this is a welcome addition to Lewis studies. Author of the acclaimed Tolstoy (LJ 8/88), Wilson renders yet another extraordinary but thoroughly human life. His Lewis is no "plaster saint." Extremely reticent about his life and canonized by devotees since his death, Lewis was a unique challenge to the biographer. Wilson adeptly considers each of Lewis's books in the context of the life and reveals how the writer came to realize the importance of the imagination in Christian faith. Lewis's conversion to Christianity, his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, and his work on the Narnia books are presented insightfully. Recommended.
- Kathleen Norris, Lemmon P.L., S.D.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (August 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393323404
• ISBN-13: 978-0393323405
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #627,449 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Read this book, February 28, 2006

By	Margaret Cooke (Virginia) - See all my reviews

I cannot claim familiarity with all of the other biographies of C.S. Lewis, but I do know a good book when I read one. This is an absorbing, revealing, if controversial, account of Lewis. Readers should not be afraid to tackle a biography written by someone who did not know Lewis personally-- this distance is one of the strengths of Wilson's book, for it is not clouded by sentimental recollections. Most importantly, you will be encouraged to read more of Lewis himself, particularly the lesser known works and literary criticism. Wilson offers excellent insights into these works which are largely forgotten, due to the popularity of a handful of other writings.

Wilson pushes readers to start from scratch in constructing an image of Lewis: Lewis the entire man--scholar, teacher, brother, lover, and fallen human being. We are discouraged from holding fast to a more typical tidy portrait of Lewis: the affable author of a select group of Christian books and children's fantasy stories. (I love the Narnia books, by the way, and my esteem for them has not been dampened whatsoever by this book.)

I didn't agree with every one of Wilson's assertions about Lewis's character or motivations, but again, Wilson's unwillingness merely to reinforce the accepted line is a great strength. Wilson's analysis is a challenge, not a conclusive rendering of absolutes. Approach it with that understanding, allow yourself to be challenged, and the experience of reading this book will be ultimately satisfying. Antoher tip: read the preface again after you've finished the book for a more complete grasp of Wilson's intentions.

Yes, read other accounts of Lewis for the broadest spectrum of perspectives possible. But don't leave this one out. Not surprisingly, those only interested in pointing out errors and shutting their minds to fresh insights will be disappointed.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mainly useful as a corrective to more respectful biographies, October 27, 2002

By	Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: C.S. Lewis: A Biography (Hardcover)

Despite a vast amount of literature on C. S. Lewis, there are surprisingly a dearth of good biographies. In most, Lewis emerges as a bit of a plastic saint, just a little too good to be true, a bit of a high-church protestant saint. This is especially true in evangelical American circles, where many imagine Lewis to have been a nonsmoking abstainer from alcohol. Many will react with shock and dismay upon learning that Lewis's smoked so heavily that he was the probable cause of his relatively early death and his drinking was considerable, and may have bordered on the alcoholic.

As a corrective to this goody-goody Lewis, Wilson provides us with a warts and all flesh-and-blood corrective. He gives us the hard drinking, mildly bawdy, addictive smoker who has a relationship with a woman old enough to be his mother and a premarital relationship with a woman he would later marry.

There are two questions to ask here. First, are Wilson's "facts" accurate? There doesn't seem to be much reason to doubt many of them. Second, are these adequate to create a good biography? No. Wilson's biography is valuable for one and only one reason: he delves into the aspects of Lewis's life that the other biographers would prefer to either ignore or pretend didn't exist. He also gives a slightly different slant on many of Lewis's intellectual and religious interests. But apart from the book's valuable debunking, it is a fairly lame biography. Lewis doesn't emerge as a particularly attractive person. He doesn't, in fact, emerge much as a person at all. Wilson doesn't doo much of a job of showing what made Lewis click at all. And while he does do a good job of showing that the St. Jack portraits of Lewis are all mildly bogus, he doesn't really provide us with an alternative.

I do recommend that anyone interested in Lewis's life read this book, because Wilson does cover many aspects of Lewis's life the others do not. But it most definitely needs to be supplemented with other biographies. Although it has its own problems, probably the best of a bad lot is Sayer's JACK: A LIFE OF C. S. LEWIS. His is a mildly sanitized biography, but the value of the book is that Lewis does begin to emerge as a three-dimensional person. Read the Wilson biography, but then read the Sayer as a corrective to Wilson's corrective.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating read, September 8, 2002

By	Manuel Haas (near Munich, Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: C.S. Lewis: A Biography (Hardcover)

Some of the reviews here are quite disturbing. Lewis in the dock? Filth? - Those people must be talking about a different book, surely. Wilson clearly admires Lewis and loves and knows his works. Most of the claims attributed to his biography by other reviewers are not actually made in the book. It seems to me that many people find it hard to accept that Lewis's lifestyle differed from the one accepted among American Evangelicals... Wilson never accuses Lewis of not being politically correct, on the contrary, he points to the times he lived in to make us understand. It's a pity many fans of Lewis will be deterred from reading this book by some of the other reviews here; this is a fair and compassionate biography which helps the reader understand Lewis and his world; above all, however, it is excellently written, and I found it hard to put it down once I had got started.