C.S. Lewis’s wife, the American writer whose death inspired A Grief Observed, was Joy Davidman. She and Lewis married in a civil ceremony in 1956 and later had a Christian marriage ceremony in 1957.
Davidman was born in New York City in 1915 and became known as a poet, novelist, and essayist. She and Lewis initially developed a friendship through correspondence. Their relationship deepened after she moved to England, where Lewis had already admired her writing and conversation.
Davidman was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1960 at the age of forty-five. Lewis’s short book A Grief Observed, first published under a pseudonym, records his anger, doubt, loneliness, and changing understanding of grief after her death.
The pseudonym helped Lewis protect his privacy, and many readers did not initially know that the book was autobiographical. Davidman’s life and marriage to Lewis have also been portrayed in biographies and dramatizations, but the historical source of the grief memoir is her death.