What was the title of C.S. Lewis’s first published book, issued in 1919 under a pseudonym?

C.S. Lewis’s first published book was Spirits in Bondage, issued in 1919 under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.

The book is a collection of poems rather than a novel or theological work. Lewis published it while he was still a young man, before the major Christian apologetic and fantasy books that later made him famous.

The pseudonym helped separate the poems from Lewis’s personal identity and reflected the literary conventions of the period. The collection’s subtitle, A Cycle of Lyrics, signals its poetic structure.

Readers sometimes confuse this book with Dymer, Lewis’s first book-length narrative poem. Dymer appeared in 1926 and used the name Clive Hamilton as well, but Spirits in Bondage came first.