What name did C.S. Lewis use for his 1933 allegorical novel about conversion?

C.S. Lewis used the title The Pilgrim’s Regress for his 1933 allegorical novel about conversion.

The book was Lewis’s first published work of prose fiction. Its subtitle, An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism, signals its engagement with religious belief, philosophy, and the longing for meaning. The central character, John, travels through a symbolic landscape while encountering ideas and figures representing different intellectual and spiritual positions.

The title deliberately echoes John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a classic Christian allegory. Lewis’s version is set in a modern intellectual world and reflects his own movement from atheism to Christianity. He became an Anglican in 1931 after years of questioning and discussion.

Readers sometimes mistake the book for a straightforward autobiography. It contains autobiographical elements, but it is principally an allegorical narrative shaped by Lewis’s arguments about reason, desire, and faith.