With my mother's death all settled happiness . . . disappeared from my life.

Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis

Perhaps the most significant event of his early life was the death of his mother when he was age nine. Lewis says in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, "With my mother's death all settled happiness . . . disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis."