SURPRISED BY JOY. The Shape Of My Early Life.

First edition, first printing. Publisher's original grey cloth with silver titles on yellow to the spine, in the John R. Briggs designed dustwrapper. Top edge yellow. A very good or better copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth bright and fresh with a small nick towards the rear joint. The contents are clean throughout and without inscriptions or stamps. Complete with the rubbed, nicked and creased dustwrapper, that has several short closed tears and a small chip midway up the rear flap fold. Not price-clipped (15s net to the lower front flap).

A philosophical, partial autobiography beginning with the author's birth in 1898 and ending with his conversion to Christianity in 1931. Rather than being the focus of the book, the details of Lewis's life are given rather to provide context and support to the spiritual concept that he calls 'Joy'. Lewis describes 'Joy' as a beguiling and ephemeral feeling of longing that he first experienced as a child when remembering a toy garden and while reading Beatrix Potter's 'Squirrel Nutkin' and Longfellow's 'Saga of King Olaf', concluding that this feeling was guiding him to God and the Christian path.