The Professor of Narnia

For all fans of The Narnia Chronicles! "The Professor of Narnia" is a fascinating and historically accurate portrayal of one of the greatest Christian writers of all time. This biography of Lewis is a must-have for Christian schools and homes. It traces the intense spiritual journey and key friendships that eventually led C.S. Lewis to wholehearted faith in Jesus and interweaves the various themes from The Narnia Chronicles with the spiritual battles Lewis encountered in his own life.

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Have you ever wanted to meet the man behind the magical land of Narnia? Now you can! Let this book introduce you to C. S. Lewis, the Oxford tutor and Cambridge Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature who wrote the seven books: The Chronicles of Narnia. Learn what made the creator of the most beloved fairy tales of the 20th century the man he was.  

Along the way you will visit all the important places of Lewis’s life: from Belfast, Northern Ireland to the trenches in France, from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to the steps of the Parthenon in Greece. On this fascinating trip you will also meet some of Lewis’s family members: his father Albert, the police court lawyer, his brilliant mother Flora and his fun-loving brother Warren. You will be introduced to some of Lewis’s best friends and most important companions like J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and Joy Davidman Gresham, the poet and novelist whom Lewis married late in life.

Our sources of transportation for this journey will be varied. Mainly we will be using a good bit of “historical imagination”. As we do so we will join Jack in a horse-drawn carriage as he goes off to boarding school for the first time. We will travel with the Lewis brothers numerous times by steamship across the Irish Sea, back and forth to England where they were educated. We will join Jack atop a red, double-decker bus where he meets, of all people, God. And we will bump along in Warren’s side-car as he takes his brother Jack to Whipsnade Zoo, the place where Jack will begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  Last but not least, we will even fly with Jack and Joy on an airplane to Greece where they will climb to the top of the Acropolis in Athens only months before Joy’s death.

As we journey through C. S. “Jack” Lewis’s 65 years of life on planet earth, from 1898 to 1963 (he died the same day as JFK) we will see how Jack dealt with many painful experiences:

·        the loss of his mother to cancer at age 9

·        separation from his home when he was sent to boarding school the same year

·        being wounded in the trenches of France during World War I

·        caring for the elderly mother of a schoolmate who died in the First World War

·        the loss of his best friend at the end of World War II

·        his brother Warren’s alcoholism

·        his late in life marriage to Joy and her subsequent death from cancer just four years later

Learn about Jack’s vast reading of all the great literature of the western tradition, from the Iliad of Homer down to the fairy tales of George MacDonald. Discover how Lewis’s mind-boggling knowledge of mythic literature influenced the writing of the Narnia books. Find out how C. S. Lewis wrote over 40 books during his lifetime, carried on a full time job as a professor, lectured widely on Christianity, took care of his family and still had time for his friends!

Join Jack on a spiritual journey from his Ulster Protestant roots in Belfast to the adopted atheism of his school days and back to Christianity after he settled into his 30-year home in Oxford, England. Ask the big questions of faith along with Jack and uncover the answers he found through his relentless search for truth.

Your tour guide for this extraordinary journey is Will Vaus, author of Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis, published by InterVarsity Press in 2004. Will is the founder of three C. S. Lewis Societies; he was the leader of a C. S. Lewis tour to England and he was one of the few people in the world who actually lived in The Narnia Cottage in Ireland along with his family.  

Will stepped through the wardrobe door for the first time when he was 9 years old and he has been studying Lewis’s life and work for over 35 years. Along the way, he has met a number of people who knew C. S. Lewis as family member, friend, teacher and colleague; from them Will has gleaned fascinating insights into what has made Lewis the bestselling Christian author of all time, outside of the Bible. Will has shared those insights with numerous audiences around the United States and in the Republic of Ireland. Now, in this book, Will relates each of the chapters of Lewis’s life to one of the Narnia stories themselves and reveals how Lewis’s life imitated art.

Will and his wife, Becky, have been married since 1988 and they have three sons: James, Jonathan and Joshua. Will’s sons have traveled with him to Narnia on numerous occasions and in many ways; in fact, he read The Professor of Narnia aloud to his boys as it was being written and got their seal of approval.  

Having read the Narnia stories as a child and talked to countless other children who love Lewis’s fairy tales, Will knows how much every young person who reads the Narnia books or has seen the blockbuster movies wants to know more about C.S. Lewis, the author of these delightful stories. This book is perfect for reading aloud, as Will did to his boys or you can read it by yourself in a cozy corner with a hot cup of tea or cocoa. The reading level is ideal for older children and teenagers. Will makes the life of the awesomely intellectual C. S. Lewis accessible to young people without ever talking down to his readers. Every child, teenager, family or class of students who reads this book will enjoy traveling in the footsteps of Jack, with Will as a fatherly friend leading the way. So come along for the ride and you may even get to meet the great lion Aslan himself.