C. S. Lewis – Interesting Literature

November 29 in Literary History: C. S. Lewis Born

The most significant events in the history of books on the 29th of November

1832: Louisa May Alcott is born. She is best known for Little Women, a novel she didn’t really want to write. When her publisher suggested the idea of writing a ‘girls’ story’ to her, Alcott was less than enthusiastic. She had never written such a book before, and had no love for the genre, considering it ‘moral pap’. However, she did like the idea of the money (as did her father), and so churned out the book quickly. It was a huge bestseller and the publishing phenomenon of the age.

November 22 in Literary History: C. S. Lewis Dies

The most significant events in the history of books on the 22nd of November

1819: George Eliot is born. She was born Mary Ann Evans (sometimes known as Marian) and adopted the name George Eliot in 1856, when she launched her career in fiction. Eliot was the author of seven full-length novels, including Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, and was also the first person to refer to modern tennis and to ‘pop’ music.

1869: André Gide is born. This French author, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, once observed: ‘With each book you write you should lose the admirers you gained with the previous one.’

Five Fascinating Facts about C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis is one of the major figures of twentieth-century children’s literature and Christian apologism, so we’ve gathered together our five favourite interesting facts about Lewis and his work. Some of the interesting facts about C. S. Lewis that follow touch upon his friendship with J. R. R. Tolkien; these may be known to diehard fans of the ‘Inklings’ (of whom more below), but we hope that some facts will be news to even devoted fans of C. S. Lewis’s work.