cover image C. S. Lewis: Images of His World

C. S. Lewis: Images of His World

Douglas R. Gilbert, Clyde S. Kilby. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, $24 (144pp) ISBN 978-0-8028-2800-2

This classic 1973 book, re-issued to coincide with Hollywood's attention to C.S. Lewis's Narnia series, offers readers a ""personal introduction"" to Lewis through photo and text. Kilby, an English professor who died in 1986, was a friend of Lewis's, and strikes an admiring tone in an opening essay on the great writer's spiritual evolution from atheist to Christian. Then Lewis's early life is presented in the usual sepia manner: we see the expected photos from his boyhood in Belfast, but we also glimpse facsimiles of some of the child prodigy's illustrated stories about ""Animal-Land."" That approach is followed in the rest of the book as well, which is not a simple photo-biography so much as a generous homage to the places Lewis lived and loved. Gilbert's photos-of Magdalen Tower in Oxford, of the pub where the Inklings read their work aloud, of beloved landscapes in England, Ireland, and Scotland-blend with historical images of Lewis and his companions. Although some of Gilbert's own photos of people and urban scenes seem dated, the landscapes are timeless and gorgeous. The book closes with a helpful chronology of Lewis's life.