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C. S. Lewis Biographical Trilogy #1
Becoming C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis
"This excellent work will have readers eagerly anticipating the next volume." —Publishers Weekly
The writings of C. S. Lewis cannot be fully understood apart from a grasp of his formative adolescent years. Unfortunately, many biographies speed over this important season of Lewis’s life.
Slowing down to focus on his younger years, this detailed portrait of “Jack” Lewis helps us discover seeds of what would inform his later writings—such as his delight in literature, his key relationships, his suffering and struggles, and his intense pursuit of joy.
The chapters unfold the habits and tastes he developed while at boarding school, in college, and in the army, revealing where we see these themes appear in his works—bringing to life the man readers have come to know as C. S. Lewis. Volume 1 in a trilogy offering a comprehensive view of the life of C. S. Lewis.
313 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 12, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
March 23, 2024
BECOMING C.S. LEWIS: A BIOGRAPHY OF YOUNG JACK LEWIS (1898-1918) by Harry Lee Poe is a meticulous research and deep exploration of C.S. Lewis's formative years.
As Harry Lee Poe points out several times during this part of the trilogy (the other parts are The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist and The Completion of C. S. Lewis: From War to Joy (1945–1963)), our childhood and adolescence shape the rest of our lives. Thus, more than merely glancing at C.S. Lewis's first twenty years is necessary to understand many of the themes he addressed in his subsequent writing.
His mother's early death due to cancer marked Jack's (as friends called him) childhood. C.S. Lewis had a hard time in various English boarding schools because of his Irishness and hand defect, which prevented him from participating in team games. He couldn't quite fit into the culture of physical strength put above intellectual ability. Involuntary solitude directed him toward reading, long walks in the countryside, and philosophical reflections on life. Yet, his otherness didn't mean he was free from the prejudices of his upbringing: he openly despised Americans and considered pupils from other parts of Britain less noble than himself. The most productive years were spent under the tutelage of William T. Kirkpatrick: Jack thoroughly studied Latin, Greek, and English authors to enter Oxford University.
Aside from depicting the straight story of Jack's life, Harry Lee Poe traces the birth of ideas that made it into the mature C.S. Lewis's writing. In order to do so, he examines the writer's correspondence, sometimes very intimate, with his father Albert, brother Warren, and his best friend Arthur Greeves, along with prior biographies by his friends. The reader will be surprised to learn that C.S. Lewis, an author of many books on Christianity, lost faith very early. For him, Christianity was on par with his beloved Norse mythology as yet another model of magical thinking.
All in all, I recommend the trilogy both to those unfamiliar with C.S. Lewis's work and his admirers. BECOMING C.S. LEWIS discloses enough about the books to compel readers to open them. For those who have already read something by C.S. Lewis, the trilogy opens new ways of interpreting the material.
(I listened to an audiobook that is not listed on GR.)
As Harry Lee Poe points out several times during this part of the trilogy (the other parts are The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist and The Completion of C. S. Lewis: From War to Joy (1945–1963)), our childhood and adolescence shape the rest of our lives. Thus, more than merely glancing at C.S. Lewis's first twenty years is necessary to understand many of the themes he addressed in his subsequent writing.
His mother's early death due to cancer marked Jack's (as friends called him) childhood. C.S. Lewis had a hard time in various English boarding schools because of his Irishness and hand defect, which prevented him from participating in team games. He couldn't quite fit into the culture of physical strength put above intellectual ability. Involuntary solitude directed him toward reading, long walks in the countryside, and philosophical reflections on life. Yet, his otherness didn't mean he was free from the prejudices of his upbringing: he openly despised Americans and considered pupils from other parts of Britain less noble than himself. The most productive years were spent under the tutelage of William T. Kirkpatrick: Jack thoroughly studied Latin, Greek, and English authors to enter Oxford University.
Aside from depicting the straight story of Jack's life, Harry Lee Poe traces the birth of ideas that made it into the mature C.S. Lewis's writing. In order to do so, he examines the writer's correspondence, sometimes very intimate, with his father Albert, brother Warren, and his best friend Arthur Greeves, along with prior biographies by his friends. The reader will be surprised to learn that C.S. Lewis, an author of many books on Christianity, lost faith very early. For him, Christianity was on par with his beloved Norse mythology as yet another model of magical thinking.
All in all, I recommend the trilogy both to those unfamiliar with C.S. Lewis's work and his admirers. BECOMING C.S. LEWIS discloses enough about the books to compel readers to open them. For those who have already read something by C.S. Lewis, the trilogy opens new ways of interpreting the material.
(I listened to an audiobook that is not listed on GR.)
June 20, 2025
Turns out there’s a lot about Lewis I didn’t know. This was a great deep dive into young Jack Lewis; Poe is incredibly thorough. I almost know more than I would’ve liked to. While pleased with the depth of Poe’s research, I’m less pleased with his style—his writing feels choppy and a bit pedantic at a few points.
February 28, 2025
A fun read on a period of Lewis' life I knew tragically little about. This biography takes readers up until Lewis turns 18 and focuses much on the relationships and literary interests Lewis developed in his earliest years. A few silly decisions from Poe along-the-way in my opinion (Jennifer, Sandra, etc. for example) but still worthy of five stars.
June 11, 2020
A well-researched deep dive into CS Lewis’s adolescence, from roughly the death of his mother until his return to Oxford following the First World War.
Poe makes a compelling case that these years were the most important formative period of Lewis’s life, a period in which he formed his most profound loves (Wagner, Spenser, Malory, Homer, chivalric romance, the sagas) and hatreds; grew first from a naive youth to an insufferably arrogant young prig before finally maturing into the beginnings of his famous friendliness and charity; and, perhaps most importantly, received the intellectual and moral formation that would work against his intemperate and haughty rationality and snobbery to lead him to the clear sightedness and open mindedness that characterized his mature thinking. Poe also does a good job of mining Lewis’s extant letters to his father Albert, his brother Warnie, and his best friend Arthur to chart the development and growth of Lewis’s character across this period. The picture is not always flattering, as Lewis himself would have acknowledged, and that makes his growth—his “journey”—all the more striking.
All that said, the book is not well organized in some sections—even within paragraphs—and as some more critical reviewers have noted it is repetitive. A final chapter in which Poe summarizes the myriad ways in which these years set Lewis on a course to both his career and his conversion is good but feels rushed. But I think those are minor faults, especially if you come to this book wanting the things I’ve described above.
Recommended to those who was a more detailed, scrutinizing look at Lewis’s early years than one is going to get from some of the standard biographies.
Poe makes a compelling case that these years were the most important formative period of Lewis’s life, a period in which he formed his most profound loves (Wagner, Spenser, Malory, Homer, chivalric romance, the sagas) and hatreds; grew first from a naive youth to an insufferably arrogant young prig before finally maturing into the beginnings of his famous friendliness and charity; and, perhaps most importantly, received the intellectual and moral formation that would work against his intemperate and haughty rationality and snobbery to lead him to the clear sightedness and open mindedness that characterized his mature thinking. Poe also does a good job of mining Lewis’s extant letters to his father Albert, his brother Warnie, and his best friend Arthur to chart the development and growth of Lewis’s character across this period. The picture is not always flattering, as Lewis himself would have acknowledged, and that makes his growth—his “journey”—all the more striking.
All that said, the book is not well organized in some sections—even within paragraphs—and as some more critical reviewers have noted it is repetitive. A final chapter in which Poe summarizes the myriad ways in which these years set Lewis on a course to both his career and his conversion is good but feels rushed. But I think those are minor faults, especially if you come to this book wanting the things I’ve described above.
Recommended to those who was a more detailed, scrutinizing look at Lewis’s early years than one is going to get from some of the standard biographies.
November 30, 2023
Five well deserved glittering stars!!!
This is the first installment in a tripartite series...
Have learned much, looking forwards to the next one!!!
If you love C. S. Lewis books and are interested in his life, then this is for you.
Harry Lee Poe has done a great job researching the life of Lewis.
It isn't my fist biography of him, but nevertheless this one is so far my favourite...
Full recommendation, the audio-book from audible is also very good indeed!!!
Great narrator...
This is the first installment in a tripartite series...
Have learned much, looking forwards to the next one!!!
If you love C. S. Lewis books and are interested in his life, then this is for you.
Harry Lee Poe has done a great job researching the life of Lewis.
It isn't my fist biography of him, but nevertheless this one is so far my favourite...
Full recommendation, the audio-book from audible is also very good indeed!!!
Great narrator...
December 13, 2025
good ole Jack
November 11, 2019
Who is the primary audience of this new biography? I would say that it would most appeal to scholars. A strong interest in history, literature, philosophy, the first world war would certainly help. A love of Lewis' writing--his literary essays, his philosophy, his nonfiction, his fiction--would be an absolute must. It isn't enough to merely love and adore the Chronicles of Narnia. One must equally love and adore his other books and articles as well.
The premise of this one is simple, "During his school days, the boy who would grow to become C. S. Lewis formed his most important tastes in music, art, literature, companionship, religion, sports, and almost every other aspect of life. While his ideas and critical thought about what he liked and disliked would change, his basic preferences came together during this period and formed the foundation out of which his later life grew." And..."The questions of C. S. Lewis that began to form in his mind during childhood and adolescence would compel him toward answers that resulted in his conversion to faith in Jesus Christ many years later."
But above all else, this one requires an enormous amount of patience--the patience of a saint, perhaps?! It is tedious, cumbersome work. Unless you are incredibly curious to know about smallest details of his daily life, year after year after year after year...one could probably sum up everything you really needed to know about this time period in his life in about a hundred pages--maybe 112 pages.
This one is idea-driven. What ideas did C.S. Lewis hold during his childhood and adolescence? When did those ideas form? Did those ideas change throughout these years? Did these ideas change as he became an adult? Did they ever change? To what extent did he stay the same and to what extent did he change? What books did he read? When did he read them? Did he reread them? Did he talk about them with anyone? Did his opinions on those books, on those authors change over time? Are there any parallels between his own books that he would later write and those that he read? Are there any similar themes? What relationships were significant to him when he was eight? when he was nine? when he was ten? when he was eleven? when he was twelve? when he was thirteen? ETC.
So many WORDS. It's not that I didn't care at all. It's that I didn't care all that much. For example, do we really need to know how often a young Jack Lewis thought about sex? which friends he discussed sex with? what his sexual fantasies were? who he fantasized about? how Lewis viewed women at this time in his life? where he got his views of women from? I pick on this one issue--which I consider almost non-relevant to C.S. Lewis the author and theologian revered by Christian masses. Almost. I mean, I suppose it shows his fallenness. But still. And this is just one example.
All that being said...I can't deny the book was well-researched. He obviously spent A LOT of time finding out EVERY LITTLE THING he possibly could about C.S. Lewis. And I do believe there are a handful of readers in the world who will care because they share a similar obsession with anything and everything Lewis related. The details go to the extreme. But it's a solid read.
The premise of this one is simple, "During his school days, the boy who would grow to become C. S. Lewis formed his most important tastes in music, art, literature, companionship, religion, sports, and almost every other aspect of life. While his ideas and critical thought about what he liked and disliked would change, his basic preferences came together during this period and formed the foundation out of which his later life grew." And..."The questions of C. S. Lewis that began to form in his mind during childhood and adolescence would compel him toward answers that resulted in his conversion to faith in Jesus Christ many years later."
But above all else, this one requires an enormous amount of patience--the patience of a saint, perhaps?! It is tedious, cumbersome work. Unless you are incredibly curious to know about smallest details of his daily life, year after year after year after year...one could probably sum up everything you really needed to know about this time period in his life in about a hundred pages--maybe 112 pages.
This one is idea-driven. What ideas did C.S. Lewis hold during his childhood and adolescence? When did those ideas form? Did those ideas change throughout these years? Did these ideas change as he became an adult? Did they ever change? To what extent did he stay the same and to what extent did he change? What books did he read? When did he read them? Did he reread them? Did he talk about them with anyone? Did his opinions on those books, on those authors change over time? Are there any parallels between his own books that he would later write and those that he read? Are there any similar themes? What relationships were significant to him when he was eight? when he was nine? when he was ten? when he was eleven? when he was twelve? when he was thirteen? ETC.
So many WORDS. It's not that I didn't care at all. It's that I didn't care all that much. For example, do we really need to know how often a young Jack Lewis thought about sex? which friends he discussed sex with? what his sexual fantasies were? who he fantasized about? how Lewis viewed women at this time in his life? where he got his views of women from? I pick on this one issue--which I consider almost non-relevant to C.S. Lewis the author and theologian revered by Christian masses. Almost. I mean, I suppose it shows his fallenness. But still. And this is just one example.
All that being said...I can't deny the book was well-researched. He obviously spent A LOT of time finding out EVERY LITTLE THING he possibly could about C.S. Lewis. And I do believe there are a handful of readers in the world who will care because they share a similar obsession with anything and everything Lewis related. The details go to the extreme. But it's a solid read.
February 5, 2020
It’s always difficult to picture a strong believer’s pre-conversion, and I found reading what Lewis was like disturbing at times. Certainly, God ordained each day of his life though, and this book shows how he became the man we admire. I liked reading about the types of stories he loved as a kid and how they liken to the stories he later wrote.
June 6, 2025
This is my first Lewis biography, I found it very helpful. It drew heavily on his personal correspondence with his dear friend Arthur Greeves, which gave it a real depth.
The most useful insight was the way that the author showed how Lewis was shaped in Christian character from a very early age through the stories that he loved. When he moved out of atheism/agnostocism, he already had the benefit of character formation through the likes of Spenser and MacDonald. It really showed how potent stories can be for discipline believers, which Lewis himself excelled in as a creator later on.
The most useful insight was the way that the author showed how Lewis was shaped in Christian character from a very early age through the stories that he loved. When he moved out of atheism/agnostocism, he already had the benefit of character formation through the likes of Spenser and MacDonald. It really showed how potent stories can be for discipline believers, which Lewis himself excelled in as a creator later on.
June 21, 2024
Read this alongside the Narnia series and I loved getting to know young Jack Lewis at the same time as the wonderful world he created. I didn’t realize how truly impactful his youth was not only in the themes of his stories but the setting and characters! Childhood development is extremely influential in so much of our earthly experience, and I loved seeing how the Lord shaped Lewis into the man that he became and softened his heart to him. A few slightly graphic descriptions that I skipped over but overall loved this! Can’t wait to read the rest!!
February 5, 2020
I own many books on and by C S Lewis, and I have read many on his life, but this is the first book I have read that traces what he read during the formative period of his life from birth through age twenty, AND it also identifies how that reading shaped his writing and his adulthood. This is a book I need to add to my personal library. The segments on Spenser's Faerie Queene were excellent, and totally worth the cost of the book.
In 2014, when I was preparing to spend the summer at Oxford, I worked my way through the first two volumes of Lewis' Letters compiled by Walter Hooper, hoping to gain a greater sense of two things. First, I wanted to know which places at Oxford would have historical significance for me during my visit, and second, I wanted to know what books influenced Lewis the most. I knew Spenser's Faerie Queene had had a signficant impact. I knew that he liked Morris. And I knew that George MacDonald's Phantastes had baptized his imagination. What I didn't know was how each of these books (and others) had impacted his writing throughout his life. Now, after reading Dr. Poe's book, I do. I also understand more fully how Lewis' pleasure reading during his formative years were used to draw him to Christ.
Some noteworthy excerpts (especially for classical educators):
-Lewis considered Homer better than Virgil throughout his life, regarding The Aeneid as simply a derivative or a reproduction of Homer's Iliad. (His thoughts on this can be found in his Preface to Paradise Lost.)
-He did not care much for either Demosthenes or Cicero, but he had a slightly higher view of Demosthenes.
-Lewis did enjoy Lucretius, Catullus, Tacitus, and Herodotus. (And as I was reading this, I wondered if perhaps the reason he enjoyed these authors was that at least two of them wrote more about war. I am not familiar with the writings of Catullus or Lucretius, so perhaps this thought is way out of line. He had not experienced the horrors of war at the point when he was reading these.)
-He loved reading William Morris, especially his The Well at the World's End (which he modeled his own Pilgrims Regress upon).
On a related note, I really appreciated the way Dr. Poe did his footnotes. His footnote presentation made it extremely easy to find the sources cited throughout the book.
All in all, a great resource for writers and definitely different from any other resource on Lewis's reading.
In 2014, when I was preparing to spend the summer at Oxford, I worked my way through the first two volumes of Lewis' Letters compiled by Walter Hooper, hoping to gain a greater sense of two things. First, I wanted to know which places at Oxford would have historical significance for me during my visit, and second, I wanted to know what books influenced Lewis the most. I knew Spenser's Faerie Queene had had a signficant impact. I knew that he liked Morris. And I knew that George MacDonald's Phantastes had baptized his imagination. What I didn't know was how each of these books (and others) had impacted his writing throughout his life. Now, after reading Dr. Poe's book, I do. I also understand more fully how Lewis' pleasure reading during his formative years were used to draw him to Christ.
Some noteworthy excerpts (especially for classical educators):
-Lewis considered Homer better than Virgil throughout his life, regarding The Aeneid as simply a derivative or a reproduction of Homer's Iliad. (His thoughts on this can be found in his Preface to Paradise Lost.)
-He did not care much for either Demosthenes or Cicero, but he had a slightly higher view of Demosthenes.
-Lewis did enjoy Lucretius, Catullus, Tacitus, and Herodotus. (And as I was reading this, I wondered if perhaps the reason he enjoyed these authors was that at least two of them wrote more about war. I am not familiar with the writings of Catullus or Lucretius, so perhaps this thought is way out of line. He had not experienced the horrors of war at the point when he was reading these.)
-He loved reading William Morris, especially his The Well at the World's End (which he modeled his own Pilgrims Regress upon).
On a related note, I really appreciated the way Dr. Poe did his footnotes. His footnote presentation made it extremely easy to find the sources cited throughout the book.
All in all, a great resource for writers and definitely different from any other resource on Lewis's reading.
July 5, 2022
One of the most groundbreaking Lewis books since Alister McGrath's Biography or Michael Ward's books–but not groundbreaking in the way Ward's or McGrath's were. Poe writes a biography specifically covering a period he believes is neglected by other writers–his childhood (1898-1918). He argues that Lewis spends the majority of "Surprised by Joy" on his school days, but biographers skimp on the same period. Poe is trying to fill that niche and account for the disparity between the autobiography and the biographies.
It works really well. given the large volume of letters Lewis wrote, especially to Arthur Greeves, there is a lot of material to glean from that is interesting for the Lewis-fan. For example, one learns about Lewis' opinions about the English, the French, women, the upper class, etc. which is interesting. One also learns about his sexual habits and thoughts, which come across as a little bit sensational, but whatever. The most interesting tidbits involve Poe's tracking of his literary tastes and how his reading habits and education at school and then with Kirkpatrick shaped his future writing and scholarship. It is particularly exciting for me, as I'm taking a class in Renaissance literature right now. As I read Spenser and Milton, I get to read about young Jack Lewis reading the same authors.
In the end, the theme of this book, that Poe probably repeats too many times, is that the interests and aversions cultivated by young Jack during his formative years would set the stage for his later life, and this is why a deeper study of that period is needed.
I doubt that the other two volumes (one of which I have, the other will be released in October, your move Crossway I'll you my address!) will be as unique as this one. After all, Poe admits that the bulk of the biographical scholarship is on the periods he will cover in those last two volumes (1919–1963).
This is not really a book for the casual Lewis fan–read Sayer or McGrath for that. But, if you have already read those, and want to go deeper, read this volume, because it doesn't tread over the same ground–it really introduces you to the huge volume of letters that you'll never read anyway!
It works really well. given the large volume of letters Lewis wrote, especially to Arthur Greeves, there is a lot of material to glean from that is interesting for the Lewis-fan. For example, one learns about Lewis' opinions about the English, the French, women, the upper class, etc. which is interesting. One also learns about his sexual habits and thoughts, which come across as a little bit sensational, but whatever. The most interesting tidbits involve Poe's tracking of his literary tastes and how his reading habits and education at school and then with Kirkpatrick shaped his future writing and scholarship. It is particularly exciting for me, as I'm taking a class in Renaissance literature right now. As I read Spenser and Milton, I get to read about young Jack Lewis reading the same authors.
In the end, the theme of this book, that Poe probably repeats too many times, is that the interests and aversions cultivated by young Jack during his formative years would set the stage for his later life, and this is why a deeper study of that period is needed.
I doubt that the other two volumes (one of which I have, the other will be released in October, your move Crossway I'll you my address!) will be as unique as this one. After all, Poe admits that the bulk of the biographical scholarship is on the periods he will cover in those last two volumes (1919–1963).
This is not really a book for the casual Lewis fan–read Sayer or McGrath for that. But, if you have already read those, and want to go deeper, read this volume, because it doesn't tread over the same ground–it really introduces you to the huge volume of letters that you'll never read anyway!
October 8, 2024
4.5 ⭐️
Ok, this was really good! I picked up this book years ago and had trouble being motivated to read it for fear of it being too much the same as the many other Lewis biographies out there. But I was pleased to be wrong.
In this volume (1 of 3), Poe focuses on Lewis’s childhood and teenage years. He successfully defends the idea that these years of Lewis’s life were vitally important in shaping who he would become as an adult.
Poe points out that most biographers skip over his teenage years, even though Lewis himself spent a huge percentage of Surprised by Joy covering his childhood
Poe is right that we should not brush over this crucial and life-shaping time in Lewis’s life.
I found this biography to be very insightful and inspiring. In particular, it was a joy to see an in-depth look at what works of literature shaped the young Lewis.
It was also moving to trace Lewis’s materialistic views as they slowly crumbled into a heap, knocked down by romanticism, which then became a rich bed of soil for Christianity to grow in later.
All in all, a great biography with little to complain about. I will definitely finish out with volumes 2 and 3.
Ok, this was really good! I picked up this book years ago and had trouble being motivated to read it for fear of it being too much the same as the many other Lewis biographies out there. But I was pleased to be wrong.
In this volume (1 of 3), Poe focuses on Lewis’s childhood and teenage years. He successfully defends the idea that these years of Lewis’s life were vitally important in shaping who he would become as an adult.
Poe points out that most biographers skip over his teenage years, even though Lewis himself spent a huge percentage of Surprised by Joy covering his childhood
Poe is right that we should not brush over this crucial and life-shaping time in Lewis’s life.
I found this biography to be very insightful and inspiring. In particular, it was a joy to see an in-depth look at what works of literature shaped the young Lewis.
It was also moving to trace Lewis’s materialistic views as they slowly crumbled into a heap, knocked down by romanticism, which then became a rich bed of soil for Christianity to grow in later.
All in all, a great biography with little to complain about. I will definitely finish out with volumes 2 and 3.
July 25, 2021
Quite simply an enthralling read. I've read Lewis's autobiography, Surprised By Joy, numerous times (once as recently as last year), and had some worry going into this book that it would cover too much ground with which I was already pretty familiar. That wasn't the case at all, happily, and this first volume (of a planned three), covering Lewis's early experiences and intellectual and emotional development, has helped me understand both Lewis and his works better than I have so far. Can't wait to start Volume 2!
April 27, 2023
As a child I loved the wonderful world of Narnia. Last summer I had the opportunity to visit Oxford, which magnified just how influenced Lewis was by his culture. Poe’s work connects the dots with how Lewis was influenced by his upbringing and how his background found it’s way in his writings, both fictional and non-fictional. I look forward to reading the next volume.
August 17, 2019
This is a well-researched and intriguing biography of C.S. Lewis, the author and lay theologian, and is the first of a three-volume work. Here, the book covers the first 20 years of Lewis' life, his formative years of his origins in Northern Ireland, his school years in England and his time on the Western Front in the latter part of WWI. It would be an eventful, often troubled boyhood, with harsh "public" (i.e., private upper-class) schools and his eventual tribulations in the war; it was a period that young Lewis would pick up an uneven education, encounter the rigors of puberty and fall out of religious belief.
The author, a C.S. Lewis scholar, has had the benefit of newly published memoirs, letters and material, and has also explored archives in Oxford and elsewhere. This book does draw out more detail about Lewis' life, even more than Lewis would describe in his own autobiography Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. The author could have kept to this outline but has filled out Lewis' account with much more context and detail.
In a way, this book could be titled "The Education of C.S. Lewis" because it traces young Lewis' literary tastes, philosophy studies, intellectual habits and formative interests. We also learn of his socializing, usually negative, in school and his formative time later with a private tutor, W. T. Kirkpatrick, who seems to have been a gifted teacher and a good mentor. We even learn about Lewis' early erotic interests, along with those of his closest boyhood friend, Arthur Greeves, who unlike Lewis seems to have developed same-sex interests as well as shared intellectual interests. Lewis did spend a brief time at Oxford, much of it in officer training, and come to realize that the poshy disdain of the "bloods" -- upper-class boys he had encountered at school -- would not be there when he came back from the war, for many of the "bloods" would not come back from the trenches. All of this, the author tells us, is what would form C.S. Lewis.
The author does leap forward in his narrative a bit, foreshadowing Lewis' later Oxford friendship with his literary "Inklings" circle, notably influential friends like J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, and their re-conversion of Lewis back to Christianity. This comes later, for Lewis at 20, in 1918, was yet to find fame and intellectual maturity, and just beginning to settle in at Oxford. Still, we see him on the cusp of a greater life, and the author shows considerable empathy in telling Lewis' story so far. His description of the educational milieu of Britain, its religious and social life, is perceptive and clear, and we learn much of Lewis' times, not just his early life. Highly recommend -- and I look forward to the next volume.
Read in advance-reading copy from Amazon Vine. Publication due out Nov. 2019.
The author, a C.S. Lewis scholar, has had the benefit of newly published memoirs, letters and material, and has also explored archives in Oxford and elsewhere. This book does draw out more detail about Lewis' life, even more than Lewis would describe in his own autobiography Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. The author could have kept to this outline but has filled out Lewis' account with much more context and detail.
In a way, this book could be titled "The Education of C.S. Lewis" because it traces young Lewis' literary tastes, philosophy studies, intellectual habits and formative interests. We also learn of his socializing, usually negative, in school and his formative time later with a private tutor, W. T. Kirkpatrick, who seems to have been a gifted teacher and a good mentor. We even learn about Lewis' early erotic interests, along with those of his closest boyhood friend, Arthur Greeves, who unlike Lewis seems to have developed same-sex interests as well as shared intellectual interests. Lewis did spend a brief time at Oxford, much of it in officer training, and come to realize that the poshy disdain of the "bloods" -- upper-class boys he had encountered at school -- would not be there when he came back from the war, for many of the "bloods" would not come back from the trenches. All of this, the author tells us, is what would form C.S. Lewis.
The author does leap forward in his narrative a bit, foreshadowing Lewis' later Oxford friendship with his literary "Inklings" circle, notably influential friends like J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, and their re-conversion of Lewis back to Christianity. This comes later, for Lewis at 20, in 1918, was yet to find fame and intellectual maturity, and just beginning to settle in at Oxford. Still, we see him on the cusp of a greater life, and the author shows considerable empathy in telling Lewis' story so far. His description of the educational milieu of Britain, its religious and social life, is perceptive and clear, and we learn much of Lewis' times, not just his early life. Highly recommend -- and I look forward to the next volume.
Read in advance-reading copy from Amazon Vine. Publication due out Nov. 2019.
February 26, 2024
This was really, really good, although it took me 7 months finish; I could set it down and then pick it up again without having to review anything. The author is obviously a C.S. Lewis scholar, and is the dean, I believe, at a Southern Baptist university.
We learn a lot about C. S. Lewis and his family and friends, and Poe spends a lot of time discussing what Lewis read, what music he listened to, the kind of education he had, and his experiences, good and terrible, at various schools.
One thing that took me aback a bit was when the author would include some of the author's experiences and opinions, taking us out of the omniscient, unknown narrator mode, and I appreciated it. It brought me into the present and the knowledge that somebody actually wrote this book, pondered it, had the experience of reading, researching, organizing, for I'm sure what wasn't an inconsiderable amount of time.
I was a bit critical of what felt like too many footnotes, but I got accustomed to them and learned to look ahead to see if the footnotes were just the sources, or if they contained other information, so I could skip the footnotes until I can to a more substantive one.
I have the next two books in the three-volume set, which I'm looking forward to reading as well.
We learn a lot about C. S. Lewis and his family and friends, and Poe spends a lot of time discussing what Lewis read, what music he listened to, the kind of education he had, and his experiences, good and terrible, at various schools.
One thing that took me aback a bit was when the author would include some of the author's experiences and opinions, taking us out of the omniscient, unknown narrator mode, and I appreciated it. It brought me into the present and the knowledge that somebody actually wrote this book, pondered it, had the experience of reading, researching, organizing, for I'm sure what wasn't an inconsiderable amount of time.
I was a bit critical of what felt like too many footnotes, but I got accustomed to them and learned to look ahead to see if the footnotes were just the sources, or if they contained other information, so I could skip the footnotes until I can to a more substantive one.
I have the next two books in the three-volume set, which I'm looking forward to reading as well.
July 14, 2025
Among biographies of CS Lewis, this is - with its companion volumes - the longest, and both its merits and demerits come from that.
Positively, it is thorough. The enthusiastic reader who has read all of Lewis' main books and a decent portion of the letters already knows almost as much as some biographies tell. This immerses you in a far wider selection of sources - particularly letters by Warnie, Kirkpatrick, and Albert Lewis - that give a much better and more rounded picture. In this first volume particularly, the way it steps you through Lewis' formative reading, both educational and recreational. There are great anecdotes and quotes from Kirkpatrick in particular. The author is determined to show that biographers need to put greater stress on Lewis' earlier life in order to understand him; he's certainly not wrong that to understand Lewis you do need to know his childhood.
And yet... this is such a repetitive book! It's very oddly structured. The author is so determined to prove that a detailed exploration of his childhood is important, that he keeps on bringing in discussions of episodes from Lewis' later life, or discussions of his books, in a way that seriously detracts from actually telling Lewis' story. What's still worse is that these digressions are incredibly repetitive - each time Poe returns to a particular book of Lewis, he will mention the same anecdote again. And why does this book end by stealing the thunder of the next volume, giving a substantial account of Lewis' conversion? At times it felt the book simply hadn't been edited.
Indeed, the book slips into a habit of finding a relation between every single experience of his childhood and every single aspect of his later work that is rather tiresome. Considering Lewis' own writing against 'The Personal Heresy in Literature' this seems bizarre. Some links are plausible - Lewis, who had been a young boy with a dying mother may have been drawing on his own experience when he wrote about Diggory in the Horse and His Boy. But the confident assertion that the woods of Narnia are based on the woods of Surrey, since that's where Lewis went walking as a teen, is laughable... it's not as if his beloved medieval romances lacked woodlands!
One of the main merits of the book, besides its readability, is that it brings out the nastiness of young CS Lewis better than most other biographies. Though Poe does slip into hagiography quite regularly, he does cover his deception of his father, his flirtation with sadomasochism, his arrogance, and other unpleasant features much better than some other authors. This helps highlight the transformation that really did come when he was converted.
That makes it all the more peculiar that here (and in the next volume) Poe can cover the liason with Janie Moore in such lurid detail - the hidden stays with her, the secret holidays, even the way in which his family took comfort from her still-married state because it meant that he couldn't marry her - and yet conclude that the relationship remained at most adolescent attraction and was ultimately platonic... that they lived together only because of his chivalrous vow to look after his friend's mother. Poe wrote the first two volumes before the posthumous release of Hooper's interview which confirmed their affair, but it really does seem as if Poe is blind to an awful lot of evidence, as well as the assertions of other biographers.
All in all, this is a worthwhile read for those seriously interested in Lewis, but more because it regurgitates a lot of archival work than for the judgements that Poe makes. His conclusions, and his descriptions of how every book Lewis ever read came out in the books he wrote, can comfortably be skimmed.
Positively, it is thorough. The enthusiastic reader who has read all of Lewis' main books and a decent portion of the letters already knows almost as much as some biographies tell. This immerses you in a far wider selection of sources - particularly letters by Warnie, Kirkpatrick, and Albert Lewis - that give a much better and more rounded picture. In this first volume particularly, the way it steps you through Lewis' formative reading, both educational and recreational. There are great anecdotes and quotes from Kirkpatrick in particular. The author is determined to show that biographers need to put greater stress on Lewis' earlier life in order to understand him; he's certainly not wrong that to understand Lewis you do need to know his childhood.
And yet... this is such a repetitive book! It's very oddly structured. The author is so determined to prove that a detailed exploration of his childhood is important, that he keeps on bringing in discussions of episodes from Lewis' later life, or discussions of his books, in a way that seriously detracts from actually telling Lewis' story. What's still worse is that these digressions are incredibly repetitive - each time Poe returns to a particular book of Lewis, he will mention the same anecdote again. And why does this book end by stealing the thunder of the next volume, giving a substantial account of Lewis' conversion? At times it felt the book simply hadn't been edited.
Indeed, the book slips into a habit of finding a relation between every single experience of his childhood and every single aspect of his later work that is rather tiresome. Considering Lewis' own writing against 'The Personal Heresy in Literature' this seems bizarre. Some links are plausible - Lewis, who had been a young boy with a dying mother may have been drawing on his own experience when he wrote about Diggory in the Horse and His Boy. But the confident assertion that the woods of Narnia are based on the woods of Surrey, since that's where Lewis went walking as a teen, is laughable... it's not as if his beloved medieval romances lacked woodlands!
One of the main merits of the book, besides its readability, is that it brings out the nastiness of young CS Lewis better than most other biographies. Though Poe does slip into hagiography quite regularly, he does cover his deception of his father, his flirtation with sadomasochism, his arrogance, and other unpleasant features much better than some other authors. This helps highlight the transformation that really did come when he was converted.
That makes it all the more peculiar that here (and in the next volume) Poe can cover the liason with Janie Moore in such lurid detail - the hidden stays with her, the secret holidays, even the way in which his family took comfort from her still-married state because it meant that he couldn't marry her - and yet conclude that the relationship remained at most adolescent attraction and was ultimately platonic... that they lived together only because of his chivalrous vow to look after his friend's mother. Poe wrote the first two volumes before the posthumous release of Hooper's interview which confirmed their affair, but it really does seem as if Poe is blind to an awful lot of evidence, as well as the assertions of other biographers.
All in all, this is a worthwhile read for those seriously interested in Lewis, but more because it regurgitates a lot of archival work than for the judgements that Poe makes. His conclusions, and his descriptions of how every book Lewis ever read came out in the books he wrote, can comfortably be skimmed.
August 20, 2019
Becoming C. S. Lewis follows the life of Jack Lewis from birth to his transition to adulthood at age 20 following World War I. The book focuses quite a bit on his school years and the literally influences and atheist world view he developed during that time. Harry Lee Poe, a Christian scholar, sets this as part 1 of a trilogy he is writing about Lewis life and conversion to Christianity. He shows how the groundwork for his faith is being set up during his formative years and after world war I he has shifted from materialism towards an agnostic view after being in the trenches. In addition to the complicated life with his family the book also explores his outlook on being Irish in an English society and his views on Home Rule shaping throughout the book. From his intellectual development to his love of literature this is probably the most in depth study written to date on C. S. Lewis formative years. If you are interested in biographies of authors, then this is a must read but if you are looking for a more casual biography of Lewis than this will likely be overkill.
November 14, 2019
Becoming C. S. Lewis (1898–1918): A Biography of Young Jack Lewis by [Poe, Harry Lee]I found this book, Becoming C.S. Lewis, to be a well-researched volume. This is to be the first of three-volumes on the gentleman. It talks about the first 20 years of Lewis' life. His time in Northern Ireland, England and in WWI. He had his troubles during this time - his education was hit and miss, and difficulties with religion.
The author, Harry Lee Poe was able to use his research, including recent published letters, memoirs and more to show the details of Lewis' life,
I found this book to be very thorough and knowledgeable. I highly recommend it.
I was given this book by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
The author, Harry Lee Poe was able to use his research, including recent published letters, memoirs and more to show the details of Lewis' life,
I found this book to be very thorough and knowledgeable. I highly recommend it.
I was given this book by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
April 19, 2021
I enjoyed learning more about the life of C.S. Lewis through Poe's biography focused on the first 20 years of his life. I hold the same position as the author that ones formidable early years greatly influence who a person is destined to become. It was interesting to read the reflections of both Lewis and Poe on how the puzzle pieces of life all fit together to comprise the image of one of the greatest scholars and advocates of the Christian faith the world has ever known.
February 28, 2024
Book 1 of 3 of a three volume biography of C. S. Lewis. I’m not going to lie, I was skeptical of how interesting a lengthy biography of Lewis’s childhood and teenage years would be, but this was captivating and I am genuinely excited to read the next two books! If you like British culture, literature, and the writings of C.S. Lewis, this book is for you. One preface I will give is that because the setting is in the time before Lewis becomes a Christian, there are some very mature elements to his later teenage years and this book wouldn’t be appropriate for a younger audience.
June 18, 2025
One of the best biographies I have read. I have not read much of CS Lewis, but this biography was immensely helpful for understanding the early life of CS Lewis. I was especially helped as the author made comments and suggestions about how different parts of his early life affected his later life and writings. I plan to read the other two volumes in the series to see how the life of this great man ends!
April 5, 2020
I have read many biographies of CS Lewis and this is one of the very best. By understanding his youth, I now have better understanding of his life. I have always wanted to know more about his close friend Arthur Greeves, Professor Kirkpatrick and other people in Lewis’ developing years and I found that here. This is a very well researched book and it is presented in easily read prose.
June 21, 2023
I loved this biography, and think any invested Lewis fan would enjoy it as well. It’s hard to understate the foundational impact CS Lewis’s early years had on the trajectory of his entire career. I loved learning about how the relationships and interests of his adolescence carried over into all of his works!
September 8, 2023
Very good. The thesis is that biographies of Lewis often skim through his youth yet this was the formative period that would lead to the man C. S Lewis, his career as English professor and his conversion to Christianity. Lewis himself acknowledged this as evident in his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy.
June 18, 2025
Interesting all the way through. Poe is a wonderful writer, and presents the early stages of Lewis’s formation in an engaging and exciting way—if it weren’t for a book study, I would have been tempted to finish it in one sitting. I’m forward to reading the other two volumes!
August 6, 2024
Excellent. A well written, engaging biography that reveals the hand of the Architect constructing the life of C.S. Lewis.
December 9, 2023
A very informative biographical work on the early life of C. S. Lewis and how his childhood and teen experiences and prolific reading impacted his eventual faith in Christ. This is book one of three.
August 17, 2022
8/15/22: This is my second read-through, and looking over my comments from three years ago, I think it pretty much sums up most of my feelings on THIS read-through, too. Poe does an excellent job of showing how almost everything that Lewis became in later life was strongly foreshadowed in his teenage years. Highly recommended!
12/4/19: This new biography of C.S. Lewis, the first of a projected trilogy, focuses almost exclusively on Lewis's adolescent years from his birth in 1898 through the end of the Great War (WWI) in 1918.
That makes it fairly unique among the many, many biographies of Lewis. Most are more concerned with the Oxford years (Tolkien, the Inklings, Narnia) and/or his romance with Joy Davidman.
Why zero in on such a specific period in Lewis's life? It's easy to see why by the end of it. These are the years when Lewis formed the tastes, passions, and pursuits that would occupy him for the rest of his life. Not surprising, considering that's the time of life most of us form the core of who we are.
Some of the information was familiar from the likes of George Sayer's classic biography "Jack" or even Lewis's own Surprised by Joy, though it never hurts to see information you thought you knew analyzed from a slightly different angle.
One of the most startling sections of this book, for me, was the presentation of Lewis's friendship with his war buddy, Paddy Moore. In short, Poe's account left me with the impression that Jack was far more interested in Paddy's mother, Mrs. Moore, than in his friendship with Paddy himself. I won't spoil the details, but this left me shaking my head a couple of times about how callous the younger Lewis (apparently) acted towards his dad, his brother, and his friend by comparison with how he treated Mrs. Moore. Of course, most of what we know comes from surviving letters, so it's fair to argue that this is, in the end, one more interpretation (albeit a convincing one) of evidence that has (mostly) been around for a while.
One of the points where this book shines brightest is in giving us a thorough treatment of Lewis's reading as a young person. What he read, how often he re-read it, and what it was in these books that appealed to him is described with a level of anecdotal and analytical detail that I haven't really seen to quite this extent (even if, again, there are things we knew from other Lewis biographies).
I'd be remiss if I failed to mention how GORGEOUS this book is. The cover, the photos at the front and back of the book (i.e. the endpapers), and the black-and-white photos scattered throughout ensure that those who DO judge books by their covers and physical qualities won't be disappointed in the least. A few of the photos have never been published.
I had the privilege of meeting Hal, the author, last month at Montreat College's Lewis symposium. Attendees had the chance to purchase early copies of the book, so I bought one and had it signed! I will definitely be keeping this on my Inklings shelf amidst the other classics of the field.
12/4/19: This new biography of C.S. Lewis, the first of a projected trilogy, focuses almost exclusively on Lewis's adolescent years from his birth in 1898 through the end of the Great War (WWI) in 1918.
That makes it fairly unique among the many, many biographies of Lewis. Most are more concerned with the Oxford years (Tolkien, the Inklings, Narnia) and/or his romance with Joy Davidman.
Why zero in on such a specific period in Lewis's life? It's easy to see why by the end of it. These are the years when Lewis formed the tastes, passions, and pursuits that would occupy him for the rest of his life. Not surprising, considering that's the time of life most of us form the core of who we are.
Some of the information was familiar from the likes of George Sayer's classic biography "Jack" or even Lewis's own Surprised by Joy, though it never hurts to see information you thought you knew analyzed from a slightly different angle.
One of the most startling sections of this book, for me, was the presentation of Lewis's friendship with his war buddy, Paddy Moore. In short, Poe's account left me with the impression that Jack was far more interested in Paddy's mother, Mrs. Moore, than in his friendship with Paddy himself. I won't spoil the details, but this left me shaking my head a couple of times about how callous the younger Lewis (apparently) acted towards his dad, his brother, and his friend by comparison with how he treated Mrs. Moore. Of course, most of what we know comes from surviving letters, so it's fair to argue that this is, in the end, one more interpretation (albeit a convincing one) of evidence that has (mostly) been around for a while.
One of the points where this book shines brightest is in giving us a thorough treatment of Lewis's reading as a young person. What he read, how often he re-read it, and what it was in these books that appealed to him is described with a level of anecdotal and analytical detail that I haven't really seen to quite this extent (even if, again, there are things we knew from other Lewis biographies).
I'd be remiss if I failed to mention how GORGEOUS this book is. The cover, the photos at the front and back of the book (i.e. the endpapers), and the black-and-white photos scattered throughout ensure that those who DO judge books by their covers and physical qualities won't be disappointed in the least. A few of the photos have never been published.
I had the privilege of meeting Hal, the author, last month at Montreat College's Lewis symposium. Attendees had the chance to purchase early copies of the book, so I bought one and had it signed! I will definitely be keeping this on my Inklings shelf amidst the other classics of the field.
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