Who was C.S. Lewis’s wife and the inspiration for A Grief Observed?

Joy Davidman was C.S. Lewis’s wife and the inspiration for A Grief Observed. Davidman was an American writer, poet, and convert to Christianity whose relationship with Lewis developed during the 1950s.

The couple entered a civil marriage in 1956 and later had a Christian ceremony in 1957. Their marriage was brief because Davidman died of cancer in 1960. Lewis’s response to her death became the basis for A Grief Observed.

Davidman was an accomplished writer in her own right, and her letters and literary work remain part of the history of Lewis’s personal and intellectual life. Some accounts distinguish the civil marriage from the later religious ceremony, which is why both dates appear in biographies.