Which C.S. Lewis work was published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk?

A Grief Observed was published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk.

Lewis wrote the book after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, from cancer in 1960. It first appeared in 1961 under the name N.W. Clerk, allowing Lewis some privacy while he recorded the anger, doubt, loneliness, and disorientation of bereavement. The book is composed of short entries rather than a conventional continuous narrative.

The pseudonym was not intended to conceal the work permanently. After Lewis’s death, later editions identified him as the author. The directness of the book surprised some readers because it includes severe questioning of religious ideas and of Lewis’s own emotional responses.

A Grief Observed is sometimes confused with Surprised by Joy, which is an autobiography about Lewis’s intellectual and spiritual development. It is also distinct from The Problem of Pain, a theological discussion written before Davidman’s illness and death. The two books therefore represent very different stages and purposes in Lewis’s religious writing.