C.S. Lewis’s memoir Surprised by Joy was published in 1955. The book recounts major stages in his intellectual and spiritual development, including childhood imagination, education, atheism, and his return to Christianity.
The title refers to Lewis’s idea of joy as an intense longing that appears unexpectedly and points beyond ordinary experiences. He discusses how literature, mythology, friendship, and philosophical conversation shaped his search for meaning. The memoir reaches his conversion to Christianity but does not provide a complete account of every later event in his life.
Lewis’s account includes his early years in Belfast, schooling in England, service in the First World War, and study at Oxford. The memoir is not the same as A Grief Observed, which focuses on bereavement after Joy Davidman’s death and appeared in 1961 under a pseudonym. Readers also sometimes assume Surprised by Joy is a conventional autobiography covering Lewis’s whole adult life; it is more specifically a narrative of his spiritual and intellectual formation.