Which Cambridge college elected C.S. Lewis as a fellow in 1954?

C.S. Lewis was elected a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1954.

That year Lewis left Oxford for Cambridge University to become the first holder of the newly established Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English. He was elected to a fellowship at Magdalene College, whose name is spelled with an ending “-e.” This Cambridge college should not be confused with Oxford’s Magdalen College, spelled without the final “e.”

Lewis continued writing during his Cambridge period, although his health was increasingly fragile. Works associated with his later career include Surprised by Joy, Till We Have Faces, and the scholarly study English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama. Cambridge also brought him into contact with a different academic environment after decades at Oxford.

The spelling distinction is a common source of errors in trivia and biographies. Oxford’s Magdalen and Cambridge’s Magdalene are separate colleges at separate universities. Lewis had a long Oxford connection, but his final professorial appointment and fellowship were at Cambridge’s Magdalene College.