Beginning of Essay
I. Form and Content Long-time friend and literary executor of the Lewis estate, Owen Barfield has suggested that there were, in fact, three "C. S. Lewises." That is to say, there were three different vocations that Lewis fulfilled--and fulfilled successfully--in ....

Middle of Essay
.... within the Lewis canon that speaks directly and unabashedly about his personal life. Given the almost stifling attention that Lewis's private life has received since his death in 1963, Surprised by Joy stands apart as an astonishingly candid yet self-effacing volume by one widely-regarded as the premier Christian apologist of the twentieth century. Lewis proceeds in Surprised by Joy as one reluctant to reveal specific details of his life but who relents, as he suggests in the preface, in order both to answer "requests that I would tell how I passed from Atheism to Christianity" and "to correct one or two false notions that seem to have got about. ....