C.S. Lewis used the pen name Clive Hamilton for poetry published before he became famous as a Christian writer. His first poetry collection, Spirits in Bondage, appeared under that name in 1919.
The pseudonym combined his first name with “Hamilton,” his mother’s maiden name. Lewis had begun writing poetry while still young, and the collection reflects the bleakness and disillusionment associated with his experiences during and after the First World War.
He later published Dymer in 1926 under the same pseudonym. After his literary reputation grew, Lewis became much better known by his initials, especially through works such as The Problem of Pain, The Chronicles of Narnia, and his academic criticism.
Clive Hamilton is often confused with Lewis’s later use of his real name. It was not a separate person or a collaborative identity; it was Lewis’s chosen byline for those early poetic works.