"Here were birthed some of the great stories of the 20th century, stories that are now regarded as being the great myths and legends of our time."

-- Brian Sibley, C.S. Lewis biographer

The fall term of 1933 at Oxford found Lewis regularly meeting with a group of his friends in his rooms at Magdalen College or in the back room of the nearby pub The Eagle and Child (fondly known as The Bird and Baby).

Dubbed The Inklings, the group included J.R.R. Tolkien, Warnie, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Dr. Robert Havard, Owen Barfield and Weville Coghill.

Colin Duriez, author of "The C.S. Lewis Encyclopedia'" said The Inklings served as a buffer against modernism.

"The 1930s was a time when modernism was very strong both as a literary movement and philosophically sweeping away the old idealism, and putting forward the scientific model as the only means to truth", Duriez said. "Lewis and his friends passionately resisted this movement, and the Inklings actually functioned as a kind of an oasis to stand against this trend, and to give encouragement to each other, to develop their writings in a consciously Christian way."

In 1938, Lewis published "Out of the Silent Planet," the first novel of a science fiction trilogy.

In 1939, "The Personal Heresy A Controversy" with E. M. W. Tillyard and "Rehabilitations and Other Essays" were published.

But, 1939 also brought the beginning of World War II and a drastic change was about to come to the Lewis household.

As the Germans Luftwaffe began bombing English cities, the government organized the evacuation of children from the cities to homes in the countryside. Four children were placed with Lewis and his brother.

"It is hard to imagine what two crusty old bachelors would have thought when a bunch of evacuated children from London turned up on their doorstep in the war. And it is hard to imagine how they could have easily adjusted to it and it must have been a nightmare for the children as well, one would have thought," said Lewis biographer Brian Sibley.

However, the children also provided the inspiration for a series of stories about four evacuees and a professor and his wardrobe that Lewis would write a few years later.

Even with the war raging, and children being children, Lewis managed to write and publish many books as well as give a series of 20 radio broadcasts that would later form the basis of "Mere Christianity."

From 1940 - 1945, "The Screwtape Letters," "A Preface to Paradise Lost," "Perelandra (book two of The Space Trilogy)," "The Great Divorce" and "That Hideous Strength (book three of The Space Trilogy)" were all published, along with other less well known works.

Lewis continued to average a book a year until his death.