Becoming C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis (1898–1918); The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918–1945); & The Completion of C. S. Lewis: From War to Joy (1945–1963)

Poe, Harry Lee. Becoming C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis (1898–1918) (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2019). Pp. 309. $22.99.

Poe, Harry Lee. The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918–1945) (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2021). Pp. 399. $32.99.

Poe, Harry Lee. The Completion of C. S. Lewis: From War to Joy (1945–1963) (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2022). Pp. 413. $34.99.

An Oxford professor of medieval literature may seem an unlikely source of spiritual formation for twenty-first century American evangelicals. Yet for the past eighty years, few Christian authors in the English-speaking world have enjoyed the influence of C. S. Lewis. The atheist-turned-apologist has enchanted millions with his Narnia stories, introducing the gospel through the side-door of imagination in the process. Lewis has evangelized skeptics through his popular apologetic works (Mere Christianity) and counseled believers in soul-matters from conversion (Surprised by Joy), to temptation (The Screwtape Letters), to friendship (The Four Loves), to grief (A Grief Observed), to worship (Reflections on the Psalms), to eternity (The Great Divorce). His sparkling quotations enhance countless sermons, books, and social media feeds.

It is unsurprising that such a significant Christian author would attract his share of biographers, beginning with Lewis intimates Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper in 1974 and George Sayer in 1988. More recent Lewis books include the controversial take of A. N. Wilson (2002), a literary study by Alan Jacobs (2009), and Alister McGrath’s critical biography (2013). Harry Lee Poe has now waded into this crowded field with a comprehensive, three-volume treatment, completed in 2022 with Crossway Books.

Poe, recently retired as the Charles Colson Professor Faith and Culture at Union University, has spent two decades teaching courses, publishing articles, and leading conferences on Lewis and the Inklings of Oxford. Poe has visited archives, conducted interviews, and carefully analyzed Lewis works both familiar and obscure to produce an exhaustive account of the Narnian from his birth in 1898 to his death in 1963.

Becoming C. S. Lewis follows “Jack” from his melancholy boyhood in Ireland to his survival of the Great War. Poe contends that Lewis’s youth wielded a decisive influence on his thought and imagination—“most of the things he liked and disliked had been settled by the time he was seventeen (11).” Poe makes a convincing case, making numerous connections in the volume between Lewis’s early and later life. Along the way, the reader learns details regarding Lewis’s ethnic Irish prejudices, his preferences in music and literature, his passion for all things “northern,” the formative loss of his mother and his strained relationship with his father, as well as his uneven (often horrible) educational experiences. Those familiar with Lewis’s autobiography, Surprised by Joy, will discover that Poe fills in many gaps in the story.

The Making of C. S. Lewis spans the dynamic years of 1918–1945, in which Lewis moves “from atheist to apologist.” The story follows the emergence of Lewis’s teaching vocation, the origins of the Inklings fellowship, the flowering of his literary career, and, of course, his decisive conversion to Jesus Christ. Of morbid fascination is Lewis’s baffling relationship with Janie Moore, mother of his fallen WWI comrade Paddie Moore, as well as Lewis’s alleged one-time lover (Poe is dubious about this latter claim). In obedience to a war-time vow, Lewis cared with chivalric devotion for an increasingly unpleasant Janie Moore in his own home for over thirty years. Lewis’s chaotic home-life casts his literary output during these years in a heroic light.

The Completion of C. S. Lewis presents the aging author now managing international fame: he lands on the cover of Time magazine in 1947, and his Narnia tales further enhance his celebrity. Lewis’s popularity provokes jealousy from Oxford colleagues, though he finally sheds them for the friendlier environs of Cambridge in 1954. But Lewis also gains many fans, among them the American divorcee Joy Davidman. The old bachelor shocks many friends in 1956 when he weds Davidman, who is fifteen years his junior and suffering from acute cancer. Many Lewis scholars paint Joy as opportunistic, but Poe tends to bless the unconventional marriage. He highlights Lewis’s genuine love and sacrificial care for Joy until her death in 1960. Indeed, Lewis’s dogged care for his many dependents serves as a recurring motif of his life. Lewis himself would die on November 22, 1963, the same day as Aldous Huxley and JFK.

At more than 1,000 pages, Poe’s trilogy comprises the most extensive biographical study of Lewis to date. The author engages with various Lewis scholars where appropriate, and offers several fresh interpretations. Poe’s exacting research yields details about Lewis’s diet and cigarette intake, his slovenly dress and love of long walks, his extensive philanthropy, literary friendships, professional rivalries, and much more. Poe analyzes all of Lewis’s major writings in their contexts but does not allow the narrative to bog down. He explains important background matters such as Irish home rule, Norse mythology, the English pub scene, materialist philosophy, and wartime rationing. Many fascinating side-players appear, from J. R. R. Tolkien and Dorothy Sayers to Warnie Lewis and Bill Gresham, though none shine as brightly as Lewis himself.

As the books’ titles indicate, Poe is most interested in tracking Lewis’s personal development, as a human being and as a man in Christ. Poe’s work in this regard is a resounding success. Readers, especially longtime Lewis fans, owe him a debt of thanks for this thorough, thought-provoking, and eminently enjoyable account. In the end, Poe judges an imperfect Lewis to have finally experienced the “completion” of his Christian discipleship. By the end of Poe’s story, the reader is not only inclined to agree but to aspire for the same.