"This is the best—the glorious best—of Lewis. For here, with the gemlike beauty and hardness that poetry alone can achieve, are his ideas about the nature of things that lay behind his writings."—Christianity TodayChristianity Today
Known worldwide for his fiction and philosophical essays, C.S. Lewis was just as much a poet as a polemicist. From the age of fourteen, he wrote poetry on just as many subjects as he covered in his prose, and in fact poetry is even present in his other writings, such as the short lyrics included in The Pilgrim’s RecessThe Pilgrim’s Recess and Till We Have FacesTill We Have Faces, which began its life as a long poem. Whether writing prose or poetry, Lewis’s “wonderful imagination is the guiding thread.”
That imagination is on display in PoemsPoems, with works covering the many varied subjects Lewis was interested in his whole life, everything from God to nature, love to reason, unicorns to spaceships.
"Take[s] an important place in the Lewis canon."—New York Times Book ReviewNew York Times Book Review
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Ireland, in Belfast on 29 November 1898. His mother was a devout Christian and made efforts to influence his beliefs. When she died in his early youth her influence waned and Lewis was subject to the musings and mutterings of his friends who were decidedly agnostic and atheistic. It would not be until later, in a moment of clear rationality that he first came to a belief in God and later became a Christian.
C. S. Lewis volunteered for the army in 1917 and was wounded in the trenches in World War I. After the war, he attended university at Oxford. Soon, he found himself on the faculty of Magdalen College where he taught Mediaeval and Renaissance English.
Throughout his academic career he wrote clearly on the topic of religion. His most famous works include the Screwtape Letters and the Chronicles of Narnia. The atmosphere at Oxford and Cambridge tended to skepticism. Lewis used this skepticism as a foil. He intelligently saw Christianity as a necessary fact that could be seen clearly in science.
"Surprised by Joy" is Lewis's autobiography chronicling his reluctant conversion from atheism to Christianity in 1931.
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