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Joy Gresham

Joy Davidman (born Helen Joy Davidman on April 18, 1915, died July 13, 1960) was an American writer, a radical communist and an 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 Gresham and Douglas Gresham. Her second marriage was to the writer and Oxford don, C.S. Lewis.

Before they met, she was separated from her first husband and came 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. It then became clear that she had terminal 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, the Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at Joy's hospital bed on March 21, 1956.

She recovered briefly, but eventually succumbed to cancer at the age of 45 on July 13, 1960. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed in response to her death.

Shadowlands, a dramatized version of her life with Lewis starring Anthony Hopkins as Jack (C. S. Lewis) and Debra Winger as Joy, was released for HBO in 1993 and is now available on DVD. It was preceded by a BBC production and a stage play; all were more or less loosely based on Douglas Gresham's book Lenten Lands.

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.

Douglas Gresham
C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed written by Lewis from his experience following Gresham's death

• "Lost in the Shadow of C.S. Lewis's Fame" (San Francisco Chronicle)
• In Lenten Lands
• The Kilns: C.S. Lewis' Oxford Refuge
• C.S. Lewis: 20th-Century Christian Knight