Who was C.S. Lewis’s wife from 1956 until her death in 1960?

Joy Davidman was C.S. Lewis’s wife from 1956 until her death in 1960.

Davidman was an American poet and writer who had previously been married to Bill Gresham. She met Lewis through correspondence and later moved to England. Their civil marriage took place in 1956, largely to resolve immigration and legal difficulties.

The couple later received a Christian marriage ceremony at Oxford’s Church of England parish in 1957, conducted by Lewis’s friend Peter Bide. Their relationship became the subject of later biographies, plays, and the film Shadowlands.

Davidman died of cancer on 13 July 1960. Lewis’s book A Grief Observed, published in 1961 under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk, reflects the emotional and theological crisis that followed her death. It is often, though not officially, read as a direct record of his mourning.