C.S. Lewis published Spirits in Bondage under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.
Spirits in Bondage appeared in 1919, when Lewis was 20 years old. The volume was a collection of poems written partly during and around his experiences in the First World War. Publishing under a pseudonym gave the young author some distance from his emerging literary identity.
The name combined “Clive,” his formal first name, with “Hamilton,” his mother’s maiden name. Lewis later became much better known by his initials, but Clive Hamilton remains an important part of his early publishing history.
The book is sometimes confused with Dymer, another early poetic work by Lewis. Dymer was published in 1926 under the name Clive Hamilton, whereas Spirits in Bondage was his first published book and appeared in 1919. Neither title was originally published under “C.S. Lewis.”