Which 1955 autobiography did C.S. Lewis write about his intellectual and spiritual journey?

Surprised by Joy is the 1955 autobiography in which C.S. Lewis describes his intellectual and spiritual journey.

The book recounts Lewis’s childhood, education, wartime experiences, academic career, and movement from atheism toward Christianity. Its title refers to a distinctive experience Lewis called “joy”: a sudden longing stirred by beauty, literature, mythology, or imagination. He treated this feeling as important to understanding his inner development.

Surprised by Joy is not a complete chronological record of Lewis’s life. It emphasizes the formation of his ideas and his changing responses to literature, philosophy, and religion. The account ends before many of the public events associated with his later career.

Readers sometimes confuse it with A Grief Observed, which is Lewis’s short, painful reflection on the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. Surprised by Joy is instead primarily an account of Lewis’s earlier intellectual and religious development.