SOURCE: "The Legacy of C. S. Lewis," in Modern Age, Vol. 33, No. 4, Summer, 1991, pp. 409-11.

In the following essay, Person discusses the enduring popularity, major themes, and critical reception of Lewis's writings.

On Friday, November 22, 1963, at about the same time as President John F. Kennedy prepared to enter the black limousine that would take him through downtown Dallas to his violent death, another life was coming to a far less dramatic close across the Atlantic in England. It was late afternoon in the village of Headington Quarry, a few miles outside Oxford, as a retired and infirm university professor, having just taken his afternoon tea, collapsed on the floor of his bedroom with a crash.

"C. S. Lewis is dead," announced F. R. Leavis to his English literature students at Cambridge University a few days later, while the world mourned for Kennedy. American novelist and essayist D. Keith...