What was C.S. Lewis's memoir about his childhood called?

C.S. Lewis's memoir about his childhood was called Surprised by Joy.

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life was published in 1955. It describes important experiences from Lewis’s childhood, education and intellectual development, including his early attraction to imaginative literature and the changing shape of his religious beliefs.

The title uses “joy” in a specialized sense. Lewis connected it with an intense, often brief longing or desire that he associated with experiences of beauty, stories and nature. The memoir is therefore not simply a chronological autobiography; it focuses on the formation of his imagination and worldview.

The book ends before covering many major later events, including Lewis’s best-known Narnia publications and his Cambridge professorship. A Grief Observed, by contrast, is a later work about bereavement after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, and is not his childhood memoir.