At which university did C.S. Lewis study as an undergraduate before becoming an Oxford academic?

C.S. Lewis studied as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford before becoming an Oxford academic.

Lewis entered University College, Oxford, in 1917, but his studies were interrupted by military service during the First World War. After returning from the conflict, he resumed his education and completed a highly successful course of study in classics, philosophy, and English. Oxford became the institution most strongly associated with his academic career.

The wording can cause confusion because Lewis later held a professorship at Magdalene College, Cambridge, beginning in 1954. Cambridge was therefore part of his later professional life, not the university where he completed his undergraduate education. His Oxford teaching career included posts at Magdalen College and other Oxford institutions.

Lewis’s Oxford years also placed him in the intellectual and literary environment that shaped much of his work. He became a tutor and lecturer, wrote scholarship on medieval and Renaissance literature, and participated in the Inklings, a discussion group that included J.R.R. Tolkien. His academic and imaginative writing developed side by side.