Which C.S. Lewis novel was published first, The Pilgrim’s Regress or The Great Divorce?

The Pilgrim’s Regress was published first, appearing in 1933 before C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. It was Lewis’s first published prose work after his conversion to Christianity and presents a symbolic journey through philosophical and theological ideas.

The book’s full title is The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism. Its title deliberately recalls John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, but Lewis’s book is set in a modern intellectual landscape. The protagonist, John, travels through a series of encounters that represent competing beliefs and desires.

The Great Divorce was published much later, in 1945. It is a short theological fantasy about a bus journey from a dreary version of Hell to the outskirts of Heaven. Because both books use imaginative journeys and allegorical elements, readers sometimes group them together without recalling their publication order. The Pilgrim’s Regress clearly came first.