The Dauntless Don: How C. S. Lewis Became a Public Intellectual, 1938-1944

The paper argues that part of C. S. Lewis’s perennial success owes to his persona as a Public Intellectual. It is therefore useful and instructive to trace the steps in the evolution that led him from literary historian and Oxford professor to Public Intellectual, a process that took place between 1938 and 1944 during the dire days of World War II.