Under what pseudonym did C.S. Lewis publish A Grief Observed?

C.S. Lewis published A Grief Observed under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk.

The book appeared in 1961, after the death of Lewis’s wife, Joy Davidman, in 1960. It is a series of reflections on bereavement, anger, doubt, memory, and the difficulty of reconciling faith with intense personal suffering.

Lewis initially used the pseudonym partly to keep the book from being read simply as a famous author’s personal testimony. Readers later learned that N.W. Clerk was Lewis. The work is therefore sometimes confused with his earlier theological books, but its direct, emotionally exposed style makes it distinctive.

A Grief Observed was not a conventional autobiography or a systematic defense of Christianity. It records an unfolding experience of grief, including changes in Lewis’s thoughts about God and prayer. Its publication history helps explain why the author’s identity was initially concealed.