Which college did C.S. Lewis attend as an undergraduate from 1917 before serving in World War I?

C.S. Lewis entered University College, Oxford, as an undergraduate in 1917. His studies were interrupted when he served as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry during the First World War.

Lewis arrived at Oxford after private tutoring and preparatory education, and he later returned to complete his academic work. He achieved outstanding results in classical studies, philosophy and English, eventually winning a teaching fellowship at Magdalen College. His early Oxford education provided the foundation for his later career as a medieval and Renaissance literature scholar.

The college should not be confused with Magdalen College, where Lewis taught for nearly three decades. University College was his undergraduate institution; Magdalen became his principal Oxford workplace. Lewis’s wartime service took him to France, where he was wounded at the Battle of Arras in 1918.

His military experience and the death of close friends influenced his later reflections on suffering, grief and belief. After the war, he resumed his studies and developed the intellectual interests that eventually shaped both his scholarship and popular writing.