Which C.S. Lewis book was first published in 1940 as a study of suffering and evil?

C.S. Lewis’s 1940 book about suffering and evil is The Problem of Pain. It examines why pain exists within a Christian understanding of a world created by a good and powerful God.

The book was written as a work of Christian apologetics, meaning that it presents reasons and arguments in defense of Christian belief. Lewis discusses subjects including divine omnipotence, human freedom, suffering, hell, animal pain, and heaven. It is a theological and philosophical work rather than a personal memoir.

Readers sometimes confuse The Problem of Pain with A Grief Observed. The former was published in 1940 as a general intellectual treatment of suffering. A Grief Observed, published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk, was a much more personal response to the death of Lewis’s wife, Joy Davidman.

The Problem of Pain was written before Lewis experienced that bereavement. Its argument therefore belongs to an earlier phase of his life and should not be treated as a direct account of his later grief.