C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on 29 November 1898.
Lewis was born at 47 Dundela Villas in the Strandtown area of Belfast. His full name was Clive Staples Lewis, and his family later moved within Ireland before he went to England for schooling. Belfast therefore belongs to the earliest part of his life, long before his academic career and literary fame.
Readers sometimes confuse Lewis’s birthplace with Oxford because Oxford was central to his adult life. He studied and taught there for many years, and he died in Oxford in 1963. Cambridge was also important later, when he became a professor there, but neither city was his birthplace.
Lewis’s Northern Irish background remained part of his personal identity, although his writing addressed readers internationally. His childhood experiences, education, conversion to Christianity, and friendships with writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien all shaped the later author of The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity.