Nearly a quarter century after his death on Nov. 22, 1963, the popularity of C.S. Lewis, who made his living as a literary scholar at Oxford and Cambridge but is better known for his apologetic and imaginative works of Christian literature, refuses to wane. Indeed, the opposite is more nearly true: His books now sell around two million copies each year in Great Britain and the United States, six times the number during his lifetime. Lewis's most famous books—Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, his science fiction "space trilogy" (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength), and The Chronicles of Narnia, a seven-volume children's series—have gone through scores of printings, and even so obscure a work as The Abolition of Man is in its 25th. The 1986—87 edition of Books in Print lists an even one hundred entries under Lewis as author. Eighty-nine of them, including numerous anthologies of his talks, essays, lay sermons, fiction, poems, and other works, have copyright dates later than Lewis's death; 65 have been published in the last decade. Books in Print also lists 34 books about Lewis, 28 of them dated 1977 or after.

In its most extreme form, the continuing popularity of Lewis verges on hagiography. Nothing rivals the account of the late New Testament translator J.B. Phillips, who, in his 1967 book The Ring of Truth, blandly reports that a "rosily radiant" Lewis visited him twice in his home shortly after he died and "spoke a few words which were particularly relevant to the difficult circumstances through which I was passing." But what of the C.S. Lewis aprons, mugs, sweatshirts, and tote bags, the calendar that promises "to bless whatever room it hangs in with a quiet sense of peace," the coffee-table book, titled C.S. Lewis: Images of His [!] World, that consists of pictures of the English landscapes that Lewis trod. The Business of Heaven, a recent collection of daily Christian devotional readings, consists entirely of excerpts from the works of Lewis. Just out is a book of days called Around the Year with C.S. Lewis and His Friends. For the date I saw (January 5), the entry read: "Warren and C.S. Lewis attended Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on this day in 1939." Thus the Lewis devotee (and there are many, judging from the sales figures) could, upon rising, don his C.S. Lewis sweatshirt, ascertain the date from his C.S. Lewis calendar, make coffee wearing his C.S. Lewis apron and drink it from his C.S. Lewis mug, offer devotion to his Maker in the words of C.S. Lewis, and meditate on what C.S. Lewis had done on that date, before setting off to work or school with his C.S. Lewis tote bag filled with C.S. Lewis books.