Roger Gilbert Lancelyn Green (2 November 1918 – 8 October 1987) was a British biographer and children's writer. He was an Oxford academic. He had a positive influence on his friend, C. S. Lewis, by encouraging him to publish The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Biography
Roger Lancelyn Green was born in 1918 in Norwich, England, to Major Gilbert Arthur Lancelyn Green (1887–1947), of the Royal Artillery, and Helena Mary Phyllis, daughter of Lt-Col Charles William Henry Sealy, of Hambledon House, Hampshire. The landed gentry Lancelyn Green family can be traced back to 1093, with the marriage of Randle Greene and Elizabeth, daughter of William Lancelyn, taking place in the reign of Elizabeth I.
He began his education at Dane Court, Pyrford and Liverpool College, after which he studied under C. S. Lewis at Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a B.Litt. degree. As an undergraduate, he performed in the Oxford University Dramatic Society's Shakespeare dramas produced by Nevill Coghill. He was deputy librarian at Merton College from 1945 to 1950, then William Noble Research Fellow in English Literature at the University of Liverpool from 1950 to 1952. As Andrew Lang Lecturer at the University of St Andrews from 1968 to 1969, When Lewis started writing the Narnia books in the late 1940s, Lancelyn Green suggested that they should be called The Chronicles of Narnia.
Lancelyn Green lived in Cheshire at Poulton Hall, a manor house that his ancestors had owned for more than 900 years; he was Lord of the Manors of Poulton-Lancelyn and Lower Bebington. He died on 8 October 1987 at the age of 68.