What was C.S. Lewis’s only explicitly autobiographical book about his childhood and conversion?

Surprised by Joy is C.S. Lewis’s autobiographical book about his childhood and conversion.

Published in 1955, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life recounts major episodes in Lewis’s intellectual and spiritual development. It covers his childhood in Belfast, education under demanding tutors, service in the First World War, study at Oxford, and movement from atheism toward Christianity.

The title refers to Lewis’s idea of “Joy,” a recurring experience of intense longing stirred by literature, mythology, and imagination. He treated this longing as important evidence in his personal search for meaning, though he distinguished it from ordinary happiness or pleasure.

The book is not a complete biography. Lewis compresses or rearranges parts of his life and focuses on inner development rather than providing a day-by-day record. Readers also sometimes confuse it with A Grief Observed, which was written after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, and deals primarily with bereavement.