What was the name of the woman C.S. Lewis married in 1956?

C.S. Lewis married Joy Davidman in 1956.

Joy Davidman was an American writer, poet, and convert to Christianity. She and Lewis began corresponding in the early 1950s after exchanging letters about faith and literature. Davidman moved to England, and the two developed a close friendship before their relationship became romantic.

The couple entered into a civil marriage in 1956 at the Oxford Register Office. A Christian marriage ceremony followed in 1957 at Holy Trinity Church, Headington, after Lewis’s church initially questioned the validity of the civil marriage. Their years together were short because Davidman died of cancer in 1960.

Their relationship is explored in Lewis’s A Grief Observed, published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk in 1961. The book is often treated as autobiography, but readers should distinguish its literary voice from a direct diary. Davidman is also associated with the film and stage play Shadowlands, which dramatize aspects of their relationship.