Which poet and writer did C.S. Lewis marry in 1956?

C.S. Lewis married the poet and writer Joy Davidman in 1956.

Davidman was born in New York City in 1915 and became known for her poetry, fiction, and Christian writing. She corresponded with Lewis before moving to England. Their civil marriage took place in April 1956 at Oxford Register Office, initially because it helped Davidman with immigration and legal circumstances.

The relationship later became a Christian marriage ceremony at Lewis’s hospital bedside in March 1957, performed by his friend and fellow Anglican priest Peter Bide. Lewis and Davidman had only a few years together because she died of cancer in 1960. Lewis’s account of grief, A Grief Observed, was published under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk.

People sometimes assume the marriage began with the 1957 church ceremony. Legally, however, Lewis and Davidman had already married in 1956. The distinction between the civil marriage and the later religious ceremony is important in biographies of their relationship.