Which C.S. Lewis novel introduces the character Elwin Ransom?

Out of the Silent Planet introduces the C.S. Lewis character Elwin Ransom.

Ransom is a Cambridge academic whose expertise in languages and medieval literature becomes crucial to the story. In Out of the Silent Planet, he is kidnapped and transported to Mars, where he learns that Earth is known as Thulcandra and that human civilization has become spiritually damaged.

Ransom returns in the two later Space Trilogy novels, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. He changes from a reluctant captive into a central moral and spiritual figure whose knowledge of language helps him communicate across species and cultures.

The character’s name is also a deliberate thematic choice: “ransom” suggests payment, rescue, or release. Readers should not confuse Elwin Ransom with Orual, the narrator of Till We Have Faces, or with characters from the Narnia books. Ransom belongs to Lewis’s adult science-fiction sequence.