What was C.S. Lewis’s first published scholarly book about English literature?

C.S. Lewis’s first published scholarly book about English literature was The Allegory of Love.

Published in 1936, The Allegory of Love examines allegorical and courtly love traditions in medieval and Renaissance literature. Lewis studies how writers treated love as a literary and intellectual subject, drawing on works from several centuries.

The book helped establish Lewis as a major literary scholar before he became internationally famous as a children’s author and Christian writer. Its subtitle, A Study in Medieval Tradition, signals its historical focus. It is sometimes confused with Lewis’s later literary histories, but The Allegory of Love was his first major scholarly monograph.