David C. Downing

David C. Downing is the Co-director (with his wife Crystal) of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois.

Downing grew up in Colorado, graduated from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, and earned his MA and PhD from UCLA.

Downing has written four scholarly books on C. S. Lewis: PLANETS IN PERIL (1992), a critical study of the Ransom trilogy; THE MOST RELUCTANT CONVERT (2002), an examination of Lewis's journey to faith; INTO THE WARDROBE (2005), an in-depth overview of the Narnia Chronicles; INTO THE REGION OF AWE (2005), a study of how Lewis's wide reading in Christian mysticism enhanced his own faith and enriched his imaginative writing. Downing also provided a critical introduction and over 400 explanatory notes to the new edition of C. S. Lewis's THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, originally published in 1933 and reissued by Eerdmans in the Wade Center Annotated Edition (2014).

Downing is an editorial consultant for Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Blackwells Books, and a number of American university presses. He is also a consulting reader for the Publications of the Modern Languages Association (PMLA), Literature Interpretation Theory (LIT) as well as Christian Scholars Review and Religion and Literature (Notre Dame).

Downing is also the author of A SOUTH DIVIDED: PORTRAITS OF DISSENT IN THE CONFEDERACY and LOOKING FOR THE KING (2010), a historical novel in which two young Americans meet Lewis and Tolkien in Oxford in 1940.

The Downings' Wade Center podcast, which has 120,000 listens in more than 100 countries, may be found at https://www.wheaton.edu/listen/wade-center-podcast/ Downing's C. S. Lewis blog is at www.cslewis.com.