C.S. Lewis's first book, Spirits in Bondage, was published in 1919.
The volume was a collection of poems and appeared under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. Lewis was twenty years old when it was published. The poems reflect themes of suffering, nature, doubt, and confinement, subjects that also appear in different forms in his later writing.
Spirits in Bondage came shortly after Lewis's service in the First World War. He had served with the Somerset Light Infantry and was wounded in 1918. The war experience contributed to the serious emotional and philosophical concerns found in some of his early poetry.
The book is less widely read than Lewis's later fiction and Christian apologetics, so it is sometimes overlooked in accounts of his career. His second poetry collection, Dymer, appeared in 1926 and was published under the name Lewis rather than Clive Hamilton.