Which American writer did C.S. Lewis marry in 1956?

C.S. Lewis married the American writer Joy Davidman in 1956.

Joy Davidman was an American poet, novelist, and Christian writer. She and Lewis first became acquainted through correspondence, after Davidman had read and engaged with his Christian writings. Their relationship developed into a close friendship and then a marriage.

The couple had a civil marriage in April 1956, partly so Davidman could obtain legal permission to remain in the United Kingdom. A Christian marriage ceremony followed in 1957, conducted by Lewis’s friend and clergyman Peter Bide. Their relationship became a significant part of Lewis’s later life.

Davidman was diagnosed with cancer, and Lewis wrote about grief after her death in 1960 in A Grief Observed, initially published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk. She is sometimes confused with Lewis’s longtime household companion, Janie Moore, but Davidman was Lewis’s wife.