Below is the list of the books that most shaped C.S. Lewis’s world view. Originally published in the Christian Century, but captured here from Jason M. Baxter‘s The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind:

• Phantastes – George MacDonald
• Everlasting Man – G.K. Chesterton
• Aeneid – Virgil
• The Temple – George Herbert
• Prelude – William Wordsworth
• The Idea of the Holy – Rudolf Otto
• Consolation of Philosophy – Boethius
• Life of Johnson – James Boswell
• Descent into Hell – Charles Williams
• Theism and Humanism – Arthur James Balfour

George MacDonald’s Phantastes stands out. The subtitle is: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women. I’ve never read it, but an entire book on Faeries, written by a Christian Congregational minister?

The sheer intellectual power of these authors is striking. I don’t think anyone of them were only writers. Maybe Virgil.

Taking a deeper look we learn Arthur James Balfour was a statesman and Prime Minister.

Charles Williams wrote poems, novels, and plays, but was also a theologian and literary critic. “Inklings” member too.

Rudolf Otto was a theologian, philosopher, and scholar.

Boethius? Boethius was a Roman senator, consul, historian, philosopher, Saint, and Martyr.

Intellectual titans, the lot of them.