C.S. Lewis published Surprised by Joy in 1955.
The book is an autobiographical account of his intellectual and spiritual development. It describes childhood reading, his education, his changing attitude toward Christianity, and the experiences that eventually led him back to Christian belief.
Lewis was born into a Christian family but became an atheist during his adolescence. He later returned to theism and then Christianity, with important conversations involving J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson in 1931.
The title refers to a powerful experience of longing that Lewis called “joy.” He used the term in a specialized sense for an intense, fleeting desire awakened by beauty, literature, or imagination—not simply ordinary happiness. Readers sometimes mistake the book for a conventional conversion memoir, but it also focuses heavily on literary and philosophical development.