What was the title of C.S. Lewis’s book about the four kinds of love, published in 1960?

C.S. Lewis’s 1960 book about four kinds of love is titled The Four Loves.

The book developed from a BBC radio series and examines four Greek terms used to distinguish different forms of affection: affection or natural fondness, friendship, erotic love, and charitable love. Lewis gives them their familiar Greek names storge, philia, eros, and agape. He does not present them as completely isolated categories; real relationships can include several kinds at once.

The Four Loves was published in the same year that Joy Davidman died, although the book itself is not a memoir of their marriage. Its discussions combine literary examples, Christian theology, and observations about family, friendship, romance, and self-giving. Readers sometimes mistake the title for a general collection of romantic reflections, but Lewis’s subject is much broader: the ways human affection can be generous, possessive, vulnerable, or transformed by charity.