"Eventually, after many years, my father gave into my pleading and sent me to study with a private tutor. William T. Kirkpatrick, retired headmaster who had once tutored my father. He was also known as The Great Knock. Since I now had now become a Godless teenager, I was delighted to discover that he too was an atheist."

-- C.S. Lewis

After the death of Flora Lewis, Lewis' father was simply unable to deal with his grief, so the boys were sent away to boarding school. Unfortunately, they ended up at Wynard School, notorious for the harsh treatment of its students. The headmaster was declared insane several years later and the school was closed. In a matter of a few weeks, life as C.S. Lewis had known it had been changed from a warm, loving family to the bullying atmosphere of an English boarding school in the early 1900s.

"Boarding school was the anti-family. If you had to invent some horror that would undo what the good family does, it would have been the boarding schools that Lewis went to," James Como, author and C.S. Lewis scholar said.

Lewis had by all accounts a miserable time at the three boarding schools he was sent to. As an un-athletic boy who enjoyed books, he was subjected to the mindless cruelty of the other boys and spent a miserable five years.

"Thanks to my schooling, the impression I got was that religion, in general, was utterly false. I wanted nothing to do with it. I maintained that God did not exist ... yet, I was also very angry with God for not existing," Lewis said later about this period of his life.

However, salvation was at hand when Arthur Lewis agreed to send his 16-year-old son to study with a tutor named William T. Kirkpatrick, known as The Great Knock. Kirkpatrick was headmaster of Lurgan College, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, from 1874-99 and had tutored Lewis' father and brother.

"C.S. Lewis called it 'red beef and strong beer' that he got when he visited W.T. Kirkpatrick and at the end of his first week there he was writing home saying this was going to be the most amazing time of all his life and it was, " said Brian Sibley, Lewis biographer

Lewis' first foray into science fiction began while under the tutelage of Kirkpatrick with a 64- page manuscript entitled "The Quest of Bleheris."

Learn more about William Thompson Kirkpatrick - (1848-1921)

Read more about the time Lewis spent with W.T. Kirkpatrick at C.S Lewis: School Days from The Question of God

Read more about "The Quest of Bleheris."