POE PUBLISHES FINAL BOOK OF EXTENSIVE C.S. LEWIS TRILOGY

Hal Poe, Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union University, has completed the most extensive C.S. Lewis biography published. His three-part Becoming C.S. Lewis series begins with Lewis’ early childhood and ends with his death in 1963.

While the project took him about five years to complete, Poe has been teaching a Christian studies class at Union University on Lewis’ life and works for over 20 years.

“All the students — dozens and dozens of students — who have taken my C.S. Lewis class are mentioned in my acknowledgements,” Poe said. “I believe that most of my scholarship is an overflow of the conversations I’ve had with students;

I think that’s the best kind of scholarship.”

Relying mostly on primary resources rather than memoirs, Poe’s biography of Lewis draws from over 3,000 pages of Lewis’ letters and diaries, as well as letters from his family and close friends. Poe said he believes most readers who are familiar with Lewis will be shocked by this new biography series.

“There is a sort of tradition for C.S. Lewis biographies that tend to lean more as memoirs, but the problem with memory is that sometimes your memory gets reoriented,” Poe said. “So, as a result, this biography corrects many facts of Lewis’ life found in other biographies.”