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

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

Under that name, Lewis published Spirits in Bondage in 1919 and Dymer in 1926. The pseudonym combined his first name, Clive, with Hamilton, a family name connected with his mother’s side. At the time, Lewis was not yet the widely recognized author of Christian apologetics and children’s fantasy.

Spirits in Bondage appeared shortly after Lewis served in the First World War, and its poems often reflect grief, doubt, suffering, and rebellion against conventional religious answers. Dymer, a longer narrative poem, was published several years later and contains elements of myth and imaginative allegory.

Lewis later became famous under his initials, C.S. Lewis, especially after The Allegory of Love, The Screwtape Letters, and the Chronicles of Narnia. Clive Hamilton is therefore easy to miss: it belongs mainly to Lewis’s early literary career, before his public identity as a Christian writer was established.