Joy Davidman

Joy Davidman (18 April 1915 – 13 July 1960) was an American poet and writer, and a radical communist and atheist until her conversion to Christianity in the late 1940s. Her first husband was the writer William Lindsay Gresham. They had two children together: David and Douglas. Her second marriage was to C. S. Lewis.

Life

Helen Joy Davidman was born into a Jewish family in New York City, of Polish and Ukrainian background. She was a child prodigy who read H. G. Wells's The Outline of History at the age of eight and entered Hunter College in New York City at the age of fourteen. Her poems were published in Poetry by the age of 21. For her collection Letters to a Comrade she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition; in 1938 she shared with Robert Frost the Russell Loines Memorial Prize. Much of her work during this period reflected her politics; she was a member of the American Communist Party.^[1]

Davidman first met the Anglo-Irish writer C. S. Lewis, on a trip to England in 1952 after a two-year correspondence. Her first marriage had been damaged by a confluence of circumstances that included her husband's alcoholism and infidelity. After divorcing Gresham, Davidman moved to England with her two sons, David and Douglas Gresham. Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend, and it was at least overtly on this level that he agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in the UK.^{[citation needed]}

Davidman was then diagnosed with incurable bone cancer, and the relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, but a friend and Anglican priest, Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at Davidman's hospital bed on 21 March 1956. The marriage did not win wide approval among Lewis's social circle, and some of his friends and colleagues avoided the new couple.^[2] Joy encouraged Lewis, known to his intimates as "Jack", to write and inspired his work.

She enjoyed a brief remission, but the cancer returned in a terminal form. Davidman died on 13 July 1960, aged 45. As a widower, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed to describe his feelings and pay tribute to his wife.

Shadowlands

• Shadowlands, a dramatized version of her life with Lewis by William Nicholson, has twice been filmed. In 1985, a television version was made by the BBC starring Joss Ackland as Lewis and Claire Bloom as Gresham. A cinema film version was released in 1993, with Anthony Hopkins as Jack (C. S. Lewis) and Debra Winger as Joy. Both are available on DVD.

• Nicholson's work, in part drawing on Douglas Gresham's book, Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and CS Lewis (Macmillan USA 1988, HarperCollins, 1989), was also performed in London as an award-winning stage play in 1989–90. The play transferred successfully to Broadway in 1990–91, and was revived in London in 2007.

Epitaph

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,

And field, and forest, as they were

Reflected in a single mind)

Like cast off clothes was left behind

In ashes, yet with hopes that she,

Re-born from holy poverty,

In lenten lands, hereafter may

Resume them on her Easter Day.

This epitaph by C. S. Lewis was originally written on the death of Charles Williams; he later adapted it to place on his wife's grave.

Books (as Joy Davidman)

• Letter to a Comrade. Yale University Press, 1938
• Anya. The Macmillan Company, 1940
• War Poems of the United Nations: The Songs and Battle Cries of a World at War: Three Hundred Poems. One Hundred and Fifty Poets from Twenty Countries. Joy Davidman, editor. Dial Press, 1943
• Weeping Bay. MacMillan, 1950
• Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments in Terms of Today. Foreword by C. S. Lewis. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954
• Out of My Bone: The Letters of Joy Davidman. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009

References

1. ^ www.ovationtv.com
2. ^ Lyle W. Dorsett (editor). The Essential C. S. Lewis. Simon & Schuster (1988). p. 13. ISBN 0-684-82374-8. 

External links

• "Lost in the Shadow of C. S. Lewis's Fame" (San Francisco Chronicle)
• In Lenten Lands
• Modern American Poetry

Persondata
Name	Davidman, Helen Joy
Alternative names	Gresham, Joy
Short description	American poet
Date of birth	18 April 1915
Place of birth	Mew York City, New York, U.S.
Date of death	13 July 1960
Place of death	England, U.K.