Due to the fame of the “Chronicles of Narnia” movies, C.S. Lewis is known to many as a best-selling novelist, but he was much more than that. In a new biography of the apologist, Oxford don and literary critic, Alister McGrath seeks primarily to understand Lewis’ ideas and their expression in his writings.

McGrath—a professor at King’s College London and head of its Center for Theology, Religion and Culture—addresses this complex man in C.S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius. Reluctant Prophet, which releases this month from Tyndale House Publishers and marks the 50th anniversary of Lewis’ death.

A distinguishing characteristic is the book’s framework. Lewis’ letters are annotated and cross-referenced by Walter Hooper in Collected Letters (Zondervan), and McGrath explains the letters, offering new insights into Lewis.

McGrath’s research began with reading all of Lewis’ writings in their order of composition. After engaging the primary texts for 15 months, he studied secondary literature about Lewis, his friends and their world, as well as unpublished materials related to the author, much of it housed at Oxford.

With its 400 pages divided into five parts—Prelude, Oxford, Narnia, Cambridge and Afterlife—the biography examines Lewis’ childhood, atheistic teen years, Oxford and Cambridge tenures, conversions to theism and Christianity, marriage and the long-lasting effects of his work.

McGrath offers observations on Lewis’ friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien as well. He describes Lewis as a “literary midwife” to Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” series, quoting Tolkien, who said the trilogy would never have been completed had it not been for Lewis’ encouragement.

Similarly, writes McGrath, Tolkien was a type of spiritual midwife for Lewis, removing “the final obstacle that stood in Lewis’s path to his rediscovery of the Christian faith.” McGrath is the first to date Lewis’ conversion to 1931 rather than 1930, based in part on Lewis’ letters.

To order the new biography, call Tyndale House Publishers at 800-323-9400 or visit www.tyndalebooksellers.com .