Lewis becomes an Oxford fellow.
In May 1925, a young academic from Belfast named Clive Staples Lewis was finally elected Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was just 26 years old. A century later, this moment stands out not just as a personal milestone in Lewis’s life, but as a turning point in 20th-century literature, theology, and popular imagination.
C.S. Lewis – today, best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and Mere Christianity – was then still an unknown scholar and largely unsuccessful poet who had struggled to get an academic appointment. But the appointment at Oxford would give him the academic foundation, intellectual community, and personal context to become one of the most influential writers of the modern era.
Oxford in the 1920s: A Changing World
The Oxford of 1925 was a university—and a world—still reeling from the trauma of the First World War. The war had swept away an entire generation of young men, reshaped political and cultural norms, and left many questioning traditional beliefs and institutions. In the midst of this upheaval, Oxford was redefining its academic priorities, expanding the study of English literature as a formal discipline, and slowly opening its doors to new voices and perspectives.
Lewis’s appointment came at this precise moment. After serving in the army during the Great War, Lewis was educated at University College, Oxford, where he achieved a rare triple first in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin), Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History), and English, distinguishing himself as a scholar of rare breadth and brilliance. But the position of fellow at Magdalen would give Lewis, who was living secretly with a much older married woman, Janie Moore and her daughter, the security and platform to flourish.
The Magdalen Years: Scholarship and Solitude
For nearly three decades, Lewis taught at Magdalen College, where he held weekly tutorials with undergraduates, lectured on medieval and renaissance literature, and contributed to the vibrant intellectual life of the university. He was a demanding but inspiring tutor, known for his razor-sharp intellect, his love of argument, and his unrelenting schedule.
Yet while his teaching was rigorous, it was also deeply rooted in a passion for literature as a living art. Lewis once wrote, “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” For him, literature was not merely academic—it was spiritual, moral, and human. He believed the study of old books was a means of rescuing modern minds from chronological snobbery and helping them encounter the great cloud of witnesses across time.
His early scholarly work, especially The Allegory of Love (1936), established him as a serious academic voice in medieval literature. But Lewis was never content to stay within the bounds of pure scholarship. The seeds of a creative and spiritual revolution were being quietly planted in these years.
The Turning Point: Atheist to Believer
At the time of his appointment, Lewis was somewhere between a firm atheist and a Hegelian Idealist who believed in the ‘Absolute’. Though raised in a Christian household in Belfast, the death of his mother when he was only nine years old, and the influence of his private tutor, atheist William Kirkpatrick, led to him to abandon his traditional faith as a young man. He often saw the world as a meaningless accident, and religion as wishful thinking. But Oxford, with its deep traditions and intellectual ferment, and many of the books he would read, would prove fertile ground for change.
Key to this transformation were the friendships Lewis formed during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Chief among them were J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, fellow Oxford academics and devout Christians. The now-famous late-night walk on Addison’s Walk in September 1931 – during which Lewis, Tolkien, and Dyson discussed myth, meaning, and the nature of truth – was a decisive moment. Shortly afterward, Lewis wrote that he had given in and “admitted that God was God.”
It was not until 1931 and the death of his father with whom he had had a difficult relationship, however, that he fully embraced Christianity. Oxford, once the cradle of his rational scepticism, had become the soil in which his faith took root.
The Inklings and the Birth of a New Imagination
As an oxford don, he played a key role in nurturing a literary fellowship known as the Inklings – a group that included Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, his brother Warnie, and others. They met regularly at the Eagle & Child pub and in Lewis’s rooms to read manuscripts aloud, debate philosophy and theology, and encourage one another’s creative work.
Without Oxford and the collegiality and imagination it cultivated there would likely be no Narnia, no Lord of the Rings, and no Screwtape Letters. Lewis began to write fiction that dramatised spiritual and moral themes in fantastical settings, beginning with The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933), followed by the Space Trilogy, and culminating in The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956), written while he was still teaching at Oxford.
Particularly, after the outbreak of WWII, he applied his intellect to Christian apologetics, honed through wartime broadcasts and eventually published as Mere Christianity (1952). He became a renowned public intellectual—perhaps the last great English Christian apologist to reach a mass audience through radio, print, and in-person lectures.
A Legacy Forged in Stone and Spirit
Lewis eventually left Oxford in 1954 to become Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University. Some say he was never fully appreciated by the Oxford establishment – his Christianity, science fiction and popular children’s stories didn’t fit comfortably within the elite academic culture of the time. But his impact there is undeniable.
Lewis died in 1963, on the same day as John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. But his legacy continues. His books are still in print and have sold over 200 million copies, been translated into dozens of languages, and adapted into Holywood films, plays, musicals and academic curricula. But it all began with that appointment as a fellow, a hundred years ago – a modest post in an ancient college.
Why It Still Matters
In 2025, as we mark the centenary of Lewis’s appointment at Oxford, we’re reminded that history often turns on quiet beginnings. A teaching job, a circle of friends, a walk through college grounds—these were the ingredients that shaped one of the most beloved writers and thinkers of the modern age.
Lewis’s story is a testament to the power of intellectual community, the necessity of honest doubt, and the beauty of a mind fully alive. It’s also a challenge to our own time: to seek truth with both reason and imagination, to read widely and think deeply, and to recognise that even the most sceptical soul might one day find itself surprised by joy.
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