What was the pen name of the narrator of C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed?

N.W. Clerk was the pen name used for the narrator of C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed. Lewis first published the book anonymously in 1961, using the pseudonym to create distance from his intensely personal account of bereavement.

The book records Lewis’s grief after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, from cancer in 1960. It takes the form of short reflections and includes anger, doubt, loneliness, and changing thoughts about prayer and God.

Because the original publication concealed Lewis’s identity, early readers did not necessarily know who had written it. The author’s identity became widely known later, and subsequent editions were published under Lewis’s name.

A Grief Observed is not a conventional biography or theological treatise. Its directness is part of its importance: Lewis examines grief as an experience that can unsettle previously confident language about faith. The pen name N.W. Clerk is therefore a distinctive bibliographical fact, not the name of a separate fictional character.