What pseudonym did C.S. Lewis use when publishing Dymer in 1926?

C.S. Lewis published the 1926 narrative poem Dymer under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.

Dymer was one of Lewis’s early major literary works. It is a long poem about a monstrous and rebellious figure named Dymer, and its themes include desire, transformation, guilt, and spiritual consequence. The work appeared before Lewis became widely known as a Christian author and children’s novelist.

The name Clive Hamilton combined Lewis’s first name with a surname he chose for publication. Lewis had already published an earlier volume of poetry, Spirits in Bondage, in 1919 under the name Clive Hamilton. The pseudonym can therefore be confused with his later use of his initials and with the nickname “Jack,” which friends and family used for Lewis himself.

Dymer is now read mainly by students of Lewis’s early poetry and intellectual development. Its publication under Clive Hamilton shows that Lewis’s literary career began with ambitious verse, not with Narnia.