What pen name did C.S. Lewis use for his early poetry books?

C.S. Lewis used the pen name Clive Hamilton for his early poetry books.

Lewis published Spirits in Bondage in 1919 and Dymer in 1926 under the name Clive Hamilton. The pseudonym combined “Clive,” a form of his first name, with “Hamilton,” his mother’s maiden name. Using it helped separate his early poetry from his later public identity as C.S. Lewis.

The choice also reflects the fact that Lewis’s literary career did not begin with Narnia or Christian apologetics. He initially published verse shaped by war, mythology, philosophical reflection, and emotional intensity. Dymer is a long narrative poem, while Spirits in Bondage is a collection of shorter poems.

Lewis later became widely known by initials that concealed his given name, Clive Staples. That makes Clive Hamilton easy to overlook, but bibliographies consistently identify it as the pseudonym attached to his early poetry publications.