Which C.S. Lewis book is a memoir of his early life and conversion?

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

Lewis published the book in 1955. It traces his childhood, education, friendships, intellectual development, service in the First World War, and movement from atheism toward Christianity. The memoir ends with his conversion to Christianity rather than providing a complete account of his later religious life.

The title refers to Lewis’s idea of “joy,” a recurring experience of intense longing that he associated with glimpses of something beyond ordinary satisfaction. He treated this experience as an important clue in his intellectual and spiritual development. The phrase was borrowed from a line in a poem by the Scottish writer Robert Bridges.

Surprised by Joy is often confused with The Pilgrim’s Regress, Lewis’s 1933 allegorical novel about a character’s search for spiritual truth. It is also distinct from A Grief Observed, his later meditation on the death of Joy Davidman. Together, these books show different genres in Lewis’s writing: memoir, allegory, and personal spiritual reflection.