Questions of identity are essential to the understanding of any writer. The ways authors perceive themselves and who they are, the communities they belong to by birth or choice, inevitably influence their work. The way they present other people, real or fictional, are also rooted in their own conception of identity. In this volume, scholars from several countries examine gender and family roles; national, regional, racial and professional identities; membership of a particular church; ideological attachments and personal descriptions, either with regard to Lewis and those who knew him and influenced him, or in a study of their writings. Authors studied here include J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams, George MacDonald and T.S. Eliot.
William Gray is Professor of Literary History and Hermeneutics at the University of Chichester, and Director of the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy. He has previously discussed C.S. Lewis in several of his books: C.S. Lewis (1998); Fantasy, Myth and the Measure of Truth: Tales of Pullman, Tolkien, Lewis, MacDonald and Hoffmann (2008); Death and Fantasy (2008); and Fantasy, Art and Life (2011).