Which 1955 memoir by C.S. Lewis recounts his early life and conversion?

Surprised by Joy is C.S. Lewis’s 1955 memoir about his early life and conversion.

The book traces Lewis’s childhood, education, intellectual development, movement away from Christianity, return to belief in God, and eventual conversion to Christianity. Its title refers to “joy,” a powerful longing or intense experience that Lewis connected with imaginative desire and spiritual pursuit.

Surprised by Joy is not a complete autobiography. It concentrates on the intellectual and spiritual path that led Lewis toward faith and gives relatively little space to some later events, including his marriage to Joy Davidman. The memoir also uses selected episodes to explain how books, mythology, friendship, and education shaped him.

Readers sometimes confuse it with A Grief Observed, which concerns Lewis’s response to Davidman’s death, or with Mere Christianity, which grew from wartime broadcasts and is not an autobiography.