Which C.S. Lewis book recounts his early life and conversion under the title Surprised by Joy?

Surprised by Joy is the C.S. Lewis book recounting his early life and conversion.

Published in 1955, Surprised by Joy is an autobiography focused especially on Lewis’s intellectual and spiritual development. It covers his childhood in Belfast, education, experiences during the First World War, return to Oxford, and movement from atheism toward Christianity.

The title refers to Lewis’s idea of “joy,” a fleeting longing or desire that he associated with experiences of beauty, literature, and imagination. He did not mean ordinary happiness, and he emphasized that attempts to possess the feeling directly usually failed.

The book ends before several major events of Lewis’s later public life, including his marriage to Joy Davidman and his years at Cambridge. It is therefore not a complete life story. Readers also sometimes confuse it with A Grief Observed, which concerns the aftermath of Davidman’s death and was published under a pseudonym.