C. S. Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898 to a father who was a solicitor and a mother who came from a family with several priests and bishops in it. When he was four, his dog Jacksie was killed by a car, and from then on, friends and family referred to him as “Jacksie,” which soon turned into “Jack.” His mother died of cancer when he was nine, and he went to school in both England and Ireland, including at Oxford. Although Lewis became an atheist at age 15, he converted to Christianity later in life, and it became a major part of his writing, both fiction and nonfiction. Most of Lewis’s significant writing occurred after his conversion. His first novel in 1933,
The Pilgrim’s Regress, did not find much success, but he earned more of a reputation as a novelist with subsequent novels
The Space Trilogy,
The Screwtape Letters, and
The Great Divorce. Lewis also gained a reputation as one of the leading Christian apologists of his time (with “apology” meaning an argument that defends a subject). His nonfiction books, which include
Mere Christianity and
The Problem of Pain, are some of the most famous in their genre. Still, Lewis remains best known for his Narnia novels, a young adult fantasy series that he first conceived in 1939 and began publishing in 1950 with
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Lewis died in 1963, but his books, particularly the Narnia series, have remained popular with readers.