What was the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1933 allegorical novel about a pilgrim named John?

C.S. Lewis’s 1933 allegorical novel about a pilgrim named John was The Pilgrim’s Regress.

The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism was Lewis’s first published prose fiction. It follows John, a young man who leaves his home after seeing a troubling object called the Island. His journey through a landscape of intellectual and spiritual positions reflects Lewis’s own movement toward Christianity.

Lewis published the book in 1933, shortly after his conversion to Christianity. The structure deliberately recalls John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, but Lewis’s allegory addresses modern philosophical debates and the longing he called “Joy.” The book’s subtitle signals that it is both a story and an argument.

Readers can confuse it with Surprised by Joy, Lewis’s later autobiographical account of his spiritual development. That memoir was published in 1955 and is not a novel. The Pilgrim’s Regress is instead a fictional allegory, with John’s journey carrying the central meaning.