What pen name did C.S. Lewis use for poetry published before 1930?

C.S. Lewis used the pen name Clive Hamilton for poetry published before 1930. Under that name, he published Spirits in Bondage in 1919 and Dymer in 1926.

Spirits in Bondage appeared while Lewis was still a young man and reflected the influence of classical literature, wartime experience, and philosophical questioning. Dymer was a longer narrative poem, also issued under the same pseudonym. The name helped separate Lewis’s early poetic identity from the literary career he later built under his initials.

Lewis’s birth name was Clive Staples Lewis, so “Clive Hamilton” was a constructed author name rather than a completely unrelated identity. He chose “Hamilton” in memory of his mother’s family, according to biographical accounts.

Readers sometimes mistake “Clive Hamilton” for Lewis’s later name in academic or theological writing. His major apologetic books, scholarly works, and children’s fiction were generally published as C.S. Lewis. The pseudonym belongs chiefly to his early poetry and is therefore easy to miss in general biographies.