C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis was a British academic, Christian apologist, and novelist whose most widely read fiction is The Chronicles of Narnia, a seven-book children's fantasy series beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which children from our world pass through a magical wardrobe into the land of Narnia, ruled over by the lion Aslan and threatened by the White Witch. Published between 1950 and 1956, the series has become one of the most enduring works of children's fantasy literature, spawning multiple film and television adaptations, including the 2005–2010 film trilogy from Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media, and earlier BBC television adaptations.

Lewis was an Oxford and later Cambridge professor of medieval and Renaissance literature, and alongside Narnia he wrote influential works of Christian apologetics (Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters) and adult science fiction (the Space Trilogy). Narnia is widely read as carrying Christian allegorical themes, though it functions on its own terms as adventure fantasy for younger readers, and Lewis himself resisted a purely allegorical reading of the books. New readers can start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as originally published, or with The Magician's Nephew if they prefer the series' internal chronological order, a long-running point of debate among readers and publishers alike. Lewis died in 1963; the series remains one of the best-selling of all time.