Which author did C.S. Lewis marry in 1956?

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

Davidman was born in New York in 1915 and became known as a poet, novelist, and Christian writer. She and Lewis first became friends through correspondence after she moved to England. Their relationship later deepened, and they married in a civil ceremony in April 1956.

The couple’s marriage was initially kept private from some of Lewis’s acquaintances. When Davidman was diagnosed with cancer, the Church of England later conducted a religious marriage ceremony for them in 1957. Their life together inspired Lewis’s memoir A Grief Observed, published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk.

Lewis and Davidman had only a few years together before her death in 1960. The marriage is sometimes overlooked because Lewis’s public reputation is dominated by Narnia and his apologetics, but Davidman had a major personal and intellectual influence on his later life.