- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; First Edition edition (12 Feb 1990)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002151375
- ISBN-13: 978-0002151375
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 16.2 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 830,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
‘The more biography he writes, the better he gets – his life of C. S. Lewis is his best yet. It’s a vivacious and compassionate book. Wilson’s range of interests – religious, literary, human-gossipy and Oxfordian – make him an ideal match for the subject.’ Andrew Motion, Observer
‘Passionate, perspicacious, funny and inevitably partisan.’ Selina Hastings, Telegraph
‘Wilson’s biography is admirable, probably the best imaginable … Mr Wilson is a brilliant biographer.’ Anthony Burgess, Independent
‘It seems fitting that A. N. Wilson should now have written the definitive biography of Lewis, and it is a superb job.’ John Bayley, Guardian
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.Evening Standard
'scrupulously level-headed, not to mention sane, sharp and witty'
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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First Sentence
Clive Staples Lewis was born on 29 November 1898 in the city of Belfast. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Clive Staples Lewis was born on 29 November 1898 in the city of Belfast. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There is great, though, as it turns out, pointless, irony in the fact that the litterateur A. N. Wilson penned this life of a famous Christian apologist while he was in the process of giving up his own Christian faith. One might anticipate from such a juxtaposition some unusual insight into Lewis' (in this case unsuccessful) methods of argumentation. Alas, nothing of the sort occurs. This is simply another Lewis biography, following the familiar outline laid down by Lewis' own "Surprised by Joy" and adding very little, save for catty psychological guesswork, that has not appeared in earlier productions of the prolific Lewis "industry".
The book's great sensation is the assertion that the young Lewis, at around age 20, had an affair with Mrs. Jane Moore, the woman whom he "adopted" as a mother figure for the rest of his life. The theory, borrowed without acknowledgement from the eccentric American Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog (whom Wilson repays with unfair derision), lacks both plausibility and evidence. Lewis had lost his mother at a young age and had chafed under his father's well-meant but wrong-headed tutelage. Mrs. Moore's son, for a while Lewis' closest friend, had died in the Great War. That the two should have formed a substitute family is not at all surprising. Wilson offers no grounds for supposing that the relationship was sexual. Instead, he offers "evidence" of this sort: Lewis' diaries use the Greek letter delta (our "D") as shorthand for Mrs. Moore. Of the many Greek words and names beginning with that letter, he singles out "Diotimia", from whom the Socrates of Plato's "Symposium" is supposed to have learned his theories about eros. That is just a wild guess, evidently made without knowledge of the fact that delta is the first letter of the Greek transliteration of "Jane". (Our "j" sound is not native to the Greek language but can be represented by the diphthong delta-zeta.)
Wilson's major weakness as a biographer is... his incurious, intellectually lazy approach to a field already tilled by many predecessors. A life that looked at Lewis from a different angle, that, for instance, probed his pre-Christian philosophical opinions and asked to what extent they truly changed as a result of his conversion or that placed his apologetics next to the works (Wells, Huxley, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin et al.) against which he was reacting or that gave adequate attention to his professional literary interests, could have been a fresh and vivid portrait. One that accepts prior interpretations with a few unflattering twists is not.
There is no point in writing a biography simply in order to say what has been said before - not even if one says it with slightly more elegance and now and then taxes the subject for his failure to anticipate politically correct points of view. As a compendium of bare facts, sprinkled with factoids, Wilson's book is acceptable, but it is hard to imagine a reason for anybody to seek it out.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Not having met Lewis I'll never know which author is more right w/o studying all C.S.Lewis' writings, which I don't see myself doing but what A.N. Wilson sure seems to have done. He obviously spent much time looking into Lewis and presented such a biography that I didn't want to put the book down. When I did put the book down I couldn't wait to get back as if I would be returning to some warm, cozy personal meeting with a wonderful friend. There were some sides of Lewis that were presented that I was surprised by but which made Lewis more human and more endearing. I want to read more of Lewis and I want to read more by Wilson.
Format:Paperback
CS Lewis is famous for many endeavours - his christian writing, his lectures, the Narnia series and his radio broadcasts. In blocks of four or five years from 1898 until 1963, A.N. Wilson covers Lewis's life in great and comprehensive detail. His objectivity and non-judgemental style are admirable as he strives to make readers aware of the different facet of Lewis's life.
A very informative read for anyone with an interest in Lewis. Recommended.
A very informative read for anyone with an interest in Lewis. Recommended.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Wonderful, Human, Respectful and Educational
As someone captivated, and influenced, by CSL's writings, from Narnia in childhood - and still reading them 30 years later :) - thru Screwtape, the SciFi trilogy, The Great Divorce... Read more
Published 17 months ago by UKLurker
C.S.Lewis the man rather than Lewis the icon
I found this book un-put-downable, unlike other reviewers here I have not read any other biographies of C.S. Read more
Published on 31 July 2007 by ISCA
Spiteful and mean spirited, but good on the lit crit.
This book deserves two stars for its excellent sections which concern CS Lewis as a literary critic. Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2007 by editor-theorist
C. S. Lewis in the dock
The man of Shadowlands and Narnia, C. S. Lewis, gave the task of writing his more or less official biography to two people. Read more
Published on 30 Jan 2001
THE DEVILS ADVOCATE RIDES OUT
A. N. Wilson, who never met Lewis, wants to save him from sainthood, and feels that previous biographers have been too adulatory. Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2000 by Michael JR Jose
A biography of C S Lewis
It is a moving account of the private life of a private man. Lewis lost his mother when he was a boy, and the book demonstrates his consequentially ambivalent relationship with... Read more
Published on 5 Dec 1998
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