- As a child, C.S. Lewis entertained himself by writing and illustrating stories about animals and he wrote his first novel at the age of 12.
- Lewis served in France during World War I and was wounded in action by a bursting shell.
- The first book Lewis published was a volume of poetry titled “Spirits in Bondage,” for which he used the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.
- Lewis was a member of the Coalbiters, an Oxford club that read aloud Icelandic sagas and myths in the original language. The club was founded by J.R.R. Tolkien.
- Due to his preference for male society, Lewis gained a reputation at Oxford as a misogynist and it was rumored that he avoided women whenever possible.
- Lewis was an atheist from his youth and did not confess Christ until his early thirties.
- Lewis’s friend J.R.R. Tolkien disliked the Narnian Chronicles, complaining that they were hastily written and unrealistic.
- Lewis undertook annual walking tours of up to 50 miles through the English countryside, accompanied by his brother and friends.
- Lewis’s marriage at nearly 60 years of age to a divorced former Communist of Jewish heritage upset many of his friends.
- The Lewis brothers’ tombstone reads, “Men must endure their going hence,” the Shakespeare quotation on their father’s calendar the day their mother died.
- J.B. Phillips in his book “The Ring of Truth” claimed that Lewis visited him from beyond the grave on two separate occasions.
- An animated television special based on Lewis’s “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” has been viewed by over 35 million people and won an Emmy award.
- Upon publication of his book “Miracles: A Preliminary Study”’ TIME magazine devoted a cover story to Lewis, Sept. 8, 1947, and marveled at how this scholar would risk the heresy of affirming supernatural Christianity in the midst of academia.
For more factoids on the life of C.S. Lewis, check out part two of this series, from Issue 88 of Christian History magazine.
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