Who was C.S. Lewis’s wife when they married in 1956?

C.S. Lewis married Joy Davidman in 1956. Davidman was an American writer and poet who had become a Christian and developed a close intellectual friendship with Lewis before their marriage.

The couple first entered a civil marriage in Oxford in April 1956. A Christian marriage ceremony followed in March 1957 at the Church of England parish church in Headington, after Lewis’s friend Reverend Peter Bide agreed to officiate.

Their relationship became widely known through Lewis’s later reflections on love, illness, and grief. Davidman was diagnosed with cancer, and she died in 1960. Lewis’s book A Grief Observed, published under a pseudonym in 1961, reflects the emotional impact of her illness and death.

Davidman was not merely a fictional inspiration or a literary acquaintance. She was an accomplished author in her own right and had published books before meeting Lewis.