Lewis first applied for a Fellowship by Examination at Magdalen College in 1922 but was unsuccessful. Having obtained a first-class degree in English Language and Literature, he successfully applied for the college’s first Tutorial Fellowship in the subject in 1925, a position that he held for almost thirty years. In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy (1955), he remembers Magdalen as a world where ‘hardly anything I wanted to know needed to be found out by my own unaided efforts’. During his time at Magdalen Lewis was active in a variety of literary societies, including the Inklings, who met in his rooms in the New Buildings to read extracts from their works in progress.
Photograph of the Fellows
The President and Fellows of Magdalen College seated in the college cloisters, 1928. Lewis is in the second row, right of centre.
Magdalen College Archives, FA1/9/2P/3, fol. 11
An entry in the Senior Common Room betting book
The Senior Common Room (or SCR) betting book preserves a wager between Lewis and C.E. Stevens, the Ancient History Fellow, over whether Eros appears in Homer’s Odyssey. Lewis won the bottle of port that was staked on the outcome.
Magdalen College Archives, Acc. 2023/7
An entry in the SCR Weights book
At special dinners, fellows and their guests weigh each other and enter the details in the SCR Weights book. This entry relates to a History dinner held in 1934.
Magdalen College Archives, O1/A11/2
Silver bon-bon dish with Turkish Delight
At dessert following dinner fellows drink port and eat assorted fruits, nuts and Turkish delight – perhaps explaining the choice of sweetmeat that proves Edmund’s undoing in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Magdalen College Chattels, SCR2/17
Collection paper written by Kenneth Taylor and marked by C.S. Lewis
Kenneth Taylor read English at Magdalen from 1944-7. In this examination paper, Lewis makes a number of comments on Taylor’s essays, including the observation that he failed to complete the exam: ‘Wd. like more than two answers’.
Magdalen College Archives, P317/MS1/1
Minute book of the Michaelmas Club
Founded by Lewis and the Modern History Fellow, K.B. McFarlane, the Michaelmas Club was an undergraduate discussion group. At a meeting in Trinity term 1930, J.R.R. Tolkien read a paper on privately constructed languages.
Magdalen College Archives, O21/A1
Tolkien’s constructed language
J.R.R. Tolkien’s poem ‘Namárië’ written in Quenya, the earliest of his Elven tongues which he began working on in the 1910s. The script is Tengwar, also devised by Tolkien.
Public Domain via Wikipedia
Entry in the Vice-President’s Register
Lewis served as Vice-President of Magdalen from 1941-2. The final task of a Vice-President is to write an account of the college year in the official register. Lewis’s contribution was a lively five-act drama in blank verse, with the title ‘The Tragi-Comicall Briefe Reigne of Lewis the Bald’.
Magdalen College Archives, VP1/A1/6, fol. 126v
Sandro Botticelli, Venus and Mars
(c. 1485)
Famously labelled ‘arid’ by one of his pupils, John Betjeman, Lewis’s College rooms were in fact decorated with reproductions of Renaissance masterpieces, including Botticelli’s Venus and Mars. Lewis referred to this painting in his discussion of the proper way of appreciating a work of art in An Experiment in Criticism (1961): ‘Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way’.
© The National Gallery, London
Letter from the Inklings to Dr Firor, 12 March 1948
Letter signed by the Inklings thanking an American supporter, Dr Warren Firor, for the gift of a ham which was eaten at a dinner held at Magdalen in March 1948.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS Eng. Lett. c.220/2, fol. 86
Posters for the Socratic Club
The Socratic Club, founded in 1942, set out to apply the Socratic principle to the pros and cons of Christianity. Lewis served as President from its inception until he left Oxford, regularly speaking and chairing the discussion at meetings.
The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS Eng. c.7882