What name did C.S. Lewis use for the 1955 autobiography Surprised by Joy?

Surprised by Joy is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1955 autobiography.

The book recounts Lewis’s childhood, education, intellectual development, and movement from atheism toward Christianity. It is not a complete day-by-day memoir; instead, Lewis selects experiences that shaped his ideas about literature, imagination, longing, and belief.

The title comes from Lewis’s use of “Joy” for a distinctive emotional experience of intense longing or desire. He connected this feeling with moments prompted by stories, nature, and myth. In the book, he describes how such experiences influenced his inner life, although he stresses that Joy itself was not the same as Christian faith.

Surprised by Joy was published in 1955, nearly a decade before Lewis’s death. It is often paired with A Grief Observed in discussions of his personal writing, but the two books have different purposes: one is an intellectual autobiography, while the other reflects on bereavement.