What was C.S. Lewis’s pen name for Spirits in Bondage, published in 1919?

C.S. Lewis used the pen name Clive Hamilton for Spirits in Bondage, published in 1919.

Spirits in Bondage was Lewis’s first published book, a collection of poems. It appeared while he was still a young man and used the name Clive Hamilton rather than C.S. Lewis. The poems reflect the influence of classical literature, wartime experience, and Lewis’s early philosophical outlook.

Lewis later used another pseudonym, N.W. Clerk, for The Pilgrim’s Regress in 1933. These names are therefore easy to confuse, especially because both belong to the period before Lewis became widely known as a Christian author.

The book came shortly after Lewis’s service in the First World War. He served in the Somerset Light Infantry and was wounded at the Battle of Arras in 1918. His early poetry is much darker and more skeptical than the Christian apologetics for which he later became famous.