Which writer married C.S. Lewis in 1956?

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

Davidman and Lewis first became friends through correspondence after meeting intellectually through her writing. They married in a civil ceremony at Oxford in April 1956. Lewis later described the relationship as a genuine marriage, and the couple lived together at The Kilns, Lewis’s home outside Oxford.

Davidman had two sons, Douglas and David, from her earlier marriage to William Lindsay Gresham. Lewis became their stepfather. The family’s life and Davidman’s illness influenced Lewis’s later writing, especially A Grief Observed, published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk.

Davidman died of cancer in 1960, only four years after the couple’s civil marriage. A 1993 film, Shadowlands, dramatized their relationship, but the film changes and compresses some events for dramatic purposes.