C.S. Lewis’s wife and the American writer who inspired Till We Have Faces was Joy Davidman.
Joy Davidman was an American poet and writer who became closely connected with Lewis during the 1950s. Their relationship developed through correspondence and friendship, and they later married. Davidman’s life, personality, and conversations with Lewis influenced his final novel, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold.
Till We Have Faces was published in 1956 and reworks the ancient myth of Cupid and Psyche. The novel is narrated by Orual, the ruler of Glome, and explores love, jealousy, identity, religion, and the difficulty of seeing oneself honestly. Lewis considered it one of his best imaginative works.
Lewis and Davidman first entered a civil marriage in 1956, and they later had a Christian marriage ceremony. Davidman died of cancer in 1960. Their marriage and her illness are treated in Lewis’s later work A Grief Observed, though that book does not name her directly in its original form.