What was the birth name of C.S. Lewis’s wife, the writer known as Joy Davidman?

C.S. Lewis’s wife, known as Joy Davidman, was born Helen Joy Davidman.

Davidman was an American poet and writer who later moved to England. She and Lewis developed a close intellectual friendship through correspondence before their relationship became personal. They had a civil marriage in 1956 and a Christian marriage ceremony in 1957.

Her life and illness strongly affected Lewis’s later writing. After Davidman was diagnosed with cancer, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed, a candid meditation on bereavement, anger, faith, and doubt. The book originally appeared under a pseudonym, which helped conceal the personal source of its grief.

Davidman is sometimes remembered only as Lewis’s wife, but she had an independent literary career before meeting him. Her birth name, Helen Joy Davidman, is the specific form recorded in biographical sources.