What pen name did C.S. Lewis use for Spirits in Bondage?

C.S. Lewis published Spirits in Bondage under the pen name Clive Hamilton.

Spirits in Bondage was Lewis’s first published book, a collection of poems released in 1919. He was only 20 years old when it appeared. The pseudonym combined his first name with Hamilton, a family name associated with his mother’s side.

Lewis was not yet known as the Christian apologist or children’s novelist familiar to modern readers. The poems reflect the influence of wartime experience, pessimism, and literary models such as William Blake and James Thomson. Lewis later became better known under the initials C.S. Lewis, but the early pseudonym is important in tracing his development as a writer. A common mix-up is to call the book’s author “C.S. Hamilton”; the published name was Clive Hamilton, while C.S. Lewis was the author’s later public identity.