Joy Davidman’s surname before her marriage to C.S. Lewis was Davidman.
Joy Davidman was an American writer who became closely connected with Lewis through correspondence and shared intellectual interests. She was born Helen Joy Davidman in New York City in 1915 and wrote poetry, novels, and other works before moving to England.
Davidman and Lewis had a civil marriage in 1956. They later received a Christian marriage ceremony at Oxford’s Church of England parish of Headington Quarry in 1957. Their relationship became an important part of Lewis’s later life, although it lasted only a few years before Davidman died of cancer in 1960.
Her life and marriage were later portrayed in the film Shadowlands. Readers sometimes give Gresham as her surname because Davidman had previously been married to William Lindsay Gresham. However, Davidman is the surname by which she is most commonly identified in biographies of Lewis.