What was the original title of C.S. Lewis’s 1940 book later known as The Problem of Pain?

C.S. Lewis’s 1940 book is titled The Problem of Pain. It examines why suffering exists if God is both good and powerful, making it one of Lewis’s major works of Christian apologetics.

Lewis discusses subjects including divine goodness, human freedom, hell, animal pain, and the fall of humanity. The book was written as a theological and philosophical argument rather than as a personal diary. Lewis attempts to explain how pain can fit within a Christian understanding of creation, while also emphasizing that intellectual explanations do not remove the emotional force of suffering.

The Problem of Pain is sometimes confused with A Grief Observed, which Lewis published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. The two books approach suffering from very different positions: The Problem of Pain is primarily a systematic argument, while A Grief Observed is a raw, personal record of bereavement.