Which pseudonym did C.S. Lewis use for his 1918 poetry book Spirits in Bondage?

C.S. Lewis used the pseudonym Clive Hamilton for Spirits in Bondage.

Spirits in Bondage was Lewis’s first published book, appearing in 1919, although its poems were written during and around his service in the First World War. The volume was attributed to Clive Hamilton rather than to C.S. Lewis, the name under which he later became famous.

The collection reflects the bleakness and disillusionment associated with wartime poetry. Lewis had served in the British Army and was wounded in 1918 during the war. His early poems do not present the Christian apologetic voice familiar from later books such as Mere Christianity; instead, they show a young writer wrestling with suffering, nature, and doubt.

Clive Hamilton was not Lewis’s birth name. His legal name was Clive Staples Lewis, and “Jack” was his familiar personal nickname. The pseudonym can therefore be mistaken for another person, but it was an early literary identity used by Lewis himself.