What pen name did C.S. Lewis use for his 1919 poetry collection Spirits in Bondage?

C.S. Lewis used the pen name Clive Hamilton for his 1919 poetry collection Spirits in Bondage.

The book was published when Lewis was 20 years old, before he became widely known as a Christian author and literary scholar. “Clive Hamilton” combined Lewis’s first name, Clive, with a surname chosen for publication. Lewis’s legal name was Clive Staples Lewis, although he was commonly called Jack by friends and family.

Spirits in Bondage contains poems shaped by war, suffering, nature, and philosophical questioning. Lewis had served in the British Army during the First World War, and several poems reflect the atmosphere of that period.

He later published another poetry collection, Dymer, in 1926 under the name Clive Hamilton. The pseudonym is therefore linked to both an early stage of Lewis’s writing career and his development before the religious works that made him famous.