Lewis began his Oxford career as a student at University College in 1917. In 1925 he was appointed Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College, where he remained until his election to the Professorship of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge in 1954. This exhibition examines his Oxford life as teacher, scholar, writer, administrator and broadcaster, and his extensive involvement in various societies, including the Socratic Club and the Inklings. It was during his Magdalen years that Lewis wrote many of his most famous works, including Out of the Silent Planet, The Screwtape Letters and the Narnia stories. The exhibition also explores how Lewis’s literary interests, and his friendships with other writers and academics, especially J.R.R. Tolkien, helped create one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers and thinkers.
The exhibition is curated by Professor Simon Horobin, Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen, whose interests are also in the medieval period, and Dr Lucy Gwynn, College Librarian. Alongside original manuscripts, books, letters, illustrations, audio recordings and photographs, the exhibition displays personal objects, including Lewis’s pipe, tobacco jar and pen.
Listening to Lewis
Lewis was recorded reading his own works or being broadcast on the radio. We also have recordings of his works read by others, and memories of him given by friends and colleagues.
The Screwtape Letters read by John Cleese
This audio book version of The Screwtape Letters read by comedian John Cleese was nominated for a Grammy in 1989.
Public Domain via YouTube: Episode 1
BBC Broadcast
This is an extract from a broadcast in March 1944, the last of four series of radio talks that Lewis delivered live from the BBC between 1941 and 1944. Three of the talks were pre-recorded because of scheduling difficulties; only the last of these has survived. The complete sets of talks were later revised and published as the best-selling book Mere Christianity in 1952.
Public Domain via YouTube
Extract from That Hideous Strength, read by Lewis
This recording, and that from The Canterbury Tales, were made at Lewis’s Headington home, The Kilns, in August 1960 on a portable tape recorder. This reading is from Chapter 13 of That Hideous Strength, in which Merlin interrogates Ransom.
Reproduced courtesy of the Marion E. Wade Center
Extract from The Canterbury Tales, read by Lewis
This extract is the opening of the General Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, read in the original Middle English.
Reproduced courtesy of the Marion E. Wade Center
Extract from Perelandra, the second book in Lewis’s Space Trilogy. 
Bonus content – this extract was not included in our physical exhibition.
Reproduced courtesy of the Marion E. Wade Center
Lewis’s inaugural lecture at Cambridge, ‘The Great Divide’
Lewis delivered the inaugural lecture marking his election to the Professorship of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University on 29 November 1954. He later revised the text for delivery on BBC radio, with the title ‘The Great Divide’. The marked-up copy of the published talk that he used for the radio performance can also be seen in this exhibition.
Bodleian Library, Dep. e.562: 31:14-34:21.
Beyond Personality: Recollections of C.S. Lewis
A radio programme broadcast by the BBC in August 1988, in which former colleagues, pupils and friends share their memories of Lewis, interspersed with excerpts from his poems, letters and prose read by the actor Norman Rodway.
Bodleian Library, Dep. e.570: 1:00-8:48