Which C.S. Lewis book is a 1955 autobiography about his conversion and intellectual journey?
Answer
Surprised by Joy
Surprised by Joy is C.S. Lewis’s 1955 autobiography about his conversion and intellectual journey.
The book traces Lewis’s development from childhood imagination through school, military service, Oxford study, and his gradual return to Christianity. Its title refers to Lewis’s idea of “joy,” a powerful, fleeting longing that he associated with experiences of beauty, literature, and imagination rather than with ordinary happiness.
Lewis describes how friendships with writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien and Owen Barfield influenced his thinking. He also recounts his movement from atheism toward theism and finally Christianity. The narrative ends before the later fame of the Narnia books.
Surprised by Joy is an autobiography, not a conventional diary or a complete account of every year of Lewis’s life. A common mix-up is A Grief Observed, which concerns Lewis’s mourning after Joy Davidman’s death and was published under a pseudonym.