What was C.S. Lewis’s pen name for his autobiography Surprised by Joy?
Answer
None; he used his own name
C.S. Lewis used his own name for his autobiography Surprised by Joy; he did not publish it under a pen name. The book appeared in 1955 and recounts his intellectual and spiritual development up to his conversion to Christianity.
Lewis’s birth name was Clive Staples Lewis, while “Jack” was the familiar name he adopted in childhood. He did use other names for some works: The Pilgrim’s Regress appeared under his name, and A Grief Observed was first published as by N.W. Clerk.
Surprised by Joy focuses on experiences of intense longing that Lewis called “joy,” along with his reading, education, friendships, and changing beliefs. It is not a complete life story: the narrative ends before the final decades of his public career and before his marriage to Joy Davidman.
The title’s “joy” refers to a distinctive form of desire or longing, not simply to cheerfulness. That concept is central to Lewis’s account of how imagination, literature, and religious belief affected him.