Two Notable Birthdays

Two famous writers share the same birthday today

Far away in the sunshine are my highest inspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.

- Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888

Louisa Alcott began publishing poems short stories, thrillers, short stories, juvenile tales under the pen name A.M.Barnyard. Her success of Little Women gave her financial independence and a lifetime writing career of many other successful novels. Like many women of her day and class she supported the woman's suffrage and temperance movements. Unfortunately did not find a lot of personal happiness due to the caretaker demands of her impractical father and ministering to her own physical aliments.  

You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
by C.S.Lewis 1898-1963   

C.S. Lewis was known to his family and friends as Jack. His real name was Clive Staples. He was a close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien. Living at a time of secularism, C.S. Lewis was a great defender of Christianity. Some of his best-known books began as broadcast talks in which he explained the essentials of the Christian faith to a broad listening audience. 

A lover of adventure stories, he wrote three widely read novels (The Space Trilogy) about interplanetary travel. These space travel narratives were also about redemption, partly inspired by Lewis’s reading of John Milton’sParadise Lost. The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven tales for children inspired by Lewis’s interest in myth and fairy tale. Written with an underlying Christian theme, the Chronicles have been enjoyed by children and adults for generations.

He was a professor of English literature at Oxford university. He was raised on books and wide reading shaped his thoughts from childhood onwards. He had a vivid imagination and a broad education in ancient and medieval literature.

I highly recommend the movie Shadowland with Debra Winger. It is a wonderful portrayal of his brief four year marriage to Joy Gresham before she died of cancer.