Charles Walter Stansby Williams was born September 20, 1886 in London. He went to school at St. Albans and later attended University College in London.

In 1905 he got a job at the Oxford UP, starting at the bottom but later becoming the literary adviser in a publisher's office. Seven years later his first book came out, and then he began lectures. He enthralled many and soon began a prolific writing career including poetry, criticism (mostly of Dante), theology, plays, and fantasy novels.

He married Florence Conway in 1917, she was from St. Albans, and it is safe to assume they met whilst he was at school or on a subsiquent return visit. He adored her, she was almost his Beatrice. He dubbed her 'Michal' after King David's first wife. There is little known about her, but they wrote to each other frequently and ardently even in later years.

In religion he was a unique sort of Christian, he belonged to the Church of England, but admired the mystical traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. He challenged much of the standard beliefs, not willing to take things on face value but looking deeper.

He valued emotion as much as intellect, but never the baser. It is difficult to explain, you need to read his work to even begin to understand it. His intense study of the relationship between the various modes of romantic love and the 'affirmation of images' versis a balance of scepticism and its connections between Christ and the Church is unprecidented.

In 1943 he received an honourary degree of MA from Oxford, due to his lectures during the war years. Two years later, 19 May 1945 Charles Williams died. His wife died in 1970, and his only child, Michael, in 2000. They are buried in Holywell Cemetary in Oxford.



"No event has so corroborated my faith in the next world as Williams did simply by dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death that was changed" (Essays xiv).

"[Williams' books] outstanding quality is what I would call glory or splendour; a heraldic brightness of colour, a marble firmness of line, and an arduous exaltation. The note struck is very unlike that of the Nineteenth Century, and equally unlike that of most moderns" (Essays vii).

"Your death blows a strange bugle call, friend, and all is hard To see plainly or record truly... Is it the first sting of the great winter, the worldwaning? Or the cold of spring? A hard question and worth talking a whole night on. But with whom? Of whom now can I ask guidance? With what friend concerning your death Is it worth while to exchange thoughts unless -- oh unless it were you?" (Poems 105).

Lewis, C.S. Foreword. Essays Presented to Charles Williams.
          Ed. C.S. Lewis. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

Lewis, C.S. Poems. Ed. Walter Hooper. New York: Harcourt, 1964.