What pen name did C.S. Lewis use for the 1961 book A Grief Observed?

C.S. Lewis used the pen name N.W. Clerk for the 1961 book A Grief Observed. The book records his emotional and spiritual response to the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, in 1960.

Lewis first published the work anonymously under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk. Its candid voice includes anger, doubt, loneliness, and changing reflections on faith, making it notably different in tone from his more systematic apologetic books. The identity of the author later became known.

The name is sometimes confused with Lewis’s earlier pseudonym Clive Hamilton, which he used for poetry collections before becoming widely known as C.S. Lewis. A Grief Observed is also distinct from Lewis’s 1955 spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy: the former centers on bereavement, while the latter recounts his intellectual and religious development.