IMAGINE STEPPING OUT of your everyday world and into a snowy, magical kingdom. Well, C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) allowed readers young and old to do just that. C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) taught medieval literature at Oxford University and later at Cambridge, and he incorporated his love of folklore and his Christian principles into the crowd-pleasing fantasies of the Chronicles of Narnia series. Now, shut the wardrobe doors and step into a quiz about C. S. Lewis.
TRUE OR FALSE?
1. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
2. The Chronicles of Narnia is a trilogy of fantasy books.
3. C. S. Lewis vehemently denied that rival author J. R. R. Tolkien had influenced his books in any way.
4. Although known for his defense of religion in classics like The Screwtape Letters (1942), Lewis was for many years an atheist.
5. Before the Narnia books, Lewis published a trilogy of science fiction novels about interplanetary travel.
ANSWERS
1. True. He was sent to school in England in 1908, just after his mother’s death.
2. False. There are seven books in the Narnia series (making it a “heptalogy”), beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and ending with The Last Battle (1956).
3. False. The authors, both of whom taught at Oxford, were close friends. In the 1930s and 1940s, Lewis and Tolkien belonged to a group of intellectuals called the Inklings, and met weekly to discuss their works in progress.
4. True. Lewis, raised Protestant, made a gradual journey from nonbeliever to Anglican. His final conversion to Christianity was sparked by a late-night discussion with two friends, one of whom was J. R. R. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic.
5. True. Moral allegories referred to as the “Cosmic Trilogy,” these books are Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). They are set on Mars, Venus, and Earth, respectively.