Who was C.S. Lewis’s wife, whom he married in a civil ceremony in 1956?

C.S. Lewis’s wife was Joy Davidman, whom he married in a civil ceremony in 1956. Davidman was an American writer and poet who later lived in England.

Lewis and Davidman first became friends through correspondence. Their relationship developed after she moved to Britain, and they married at the Oxford register office in April 1956. At first, the civil marriage was often described as a legal arrangement connected with immigration status, but their relationship deepened.

An Anglican church marriage followed in 1957, conducted by Lewis’s friend and clergyman Peter Bide. The couple’s marriage was short: Davidman was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1960. Lewis later wrote about the experience of grief in A Grief Observed, published under the name N.W. Clerk.

Davidman is sometimes confused with Lewis’s longtime friend Dorothy L. Sayers, who was also a prominent Christian writer. Sayers and Lewis never married. Davidman’s marriage to Lewis was a major personal chapter in his final years.