Which C.S. Lewis book explores affection, friendship, romantic love, and charity?

The Four Loves is C.S. Lewis’s book about affection, friendship, romantic love, and charity.

The work developed from a series of BBC radio talks broadcast in 1958 and was published as a book in 1960. Lewis examines four Greek terms commonly used to distinguish kinds of love: storge, philia, eros, and agape. In the book’s English terminology, these correspond broadly to affection, friendship, romantic love, and charity.

Lewis does not treat the categories as isolated compartments. He describes how natural forms of love can be generous and life-giving, yet can also become possessive when treated as ultimate. Charity, or agape, represents a divine form of love that transforms and perfects the others.

The title is sometimes confused with The Allegory of Love, which is an earlier literary study by Lewis, or with Mere Christianity, his well-known book based on radio broadcasts about Christian belief. The Four Loves focuses specifically on types and experiences of love.