The first name of C.S. Lewis’s wife, the American writer he married in 1956, was Joy.
Joy Davidman was an American poet and writer who developed a close intellectual relationship with Lewis through correspondence. She moved to England and became part of his household. Lewis and Davidman married in a civil ceremony in 1956, initially so she could remain in the United Kingdom under immigration rules.
Their relationship later became a Christian marriage in the Church of England. The couple had relatively little time together because Davidman was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1960. Lewis later described his grief and spiritual struggle in A Grief Observed, published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk.
Davidman is sometimes remembered only as the subject of the film Shadowlands, but she was also an accomplished writer in her own right. Her connection with Lewis involved poetry, theology, letters, and domestic life. The marriage occurred late in Lewis’s life and is separate from his long friendship with Arthur Greeves, who had been an important companion since Lewis’s adolescence.