What was the title of C.S. Lewis’s first published book, released in 1919?

C.S. Lewis’s first published book, released in 1919, was Spirits in Bondage.

Spirits in Bondage is a collection of poems published while Lewis was still a young man. It appeared under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton, combining his first name with the surname of his mother’s family. Lewis was an undergraduate at University College, Oxford, when the book was published.

The poems reflect the influence of classical literature, Romantic poetry, and Lewis’s outlook before his return to Christianity. Their themes include suffering, war, nature, mortality, and spiritual uncertainty. The collection therefore differs greatly in tone from Lewis’s later Christian apologetics.

Readers sometimes choose Dymer because it was also published under the Clive Hamilton name, but Dymer appeared in 1926. The Pilgrim’s Regress came later, in 1933, after Lewis had become a Christian. Spirits in Bondage is the correct first-book distinction.