Joy Davidman
| Joy Davidman | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Helen Joy Davidman 18 April 1915 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | 13 July 1960 (aged 45) Oxford, England |
| Cause of death | Breast cancer |
| Residence | US, UK |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | American |
| Occupation | Poet, author |
| Known for | Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments; life with CS Lewis |
| Spouse(s) |
William Lindsay Gresham (m. 1942–54), C. S. Lewis (m. 1956–60) |
| Children | 2; including Douglas Gresham |
Helen Joy Davidman (18 April 1915 – 13 July 1960) was an American poet and writer. Often referred to as a child prodigy, she earned a master's degree from Columbia University in English literature in 1935. For her book of poems, Letter to a Comrade, she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1938 and the Russell Loines Award for Poetry in 1939. She was the author of several books, including two novels.
While an atheist and after becoming a member of the American Communist Party, she met and married her first husband and father of her two sons, William Lindsay Gresham, in 1942. After a troubled marriage, and following her conversion to Christianity, they divorced and she left America to travel to England with her sons.
Davidman published her best known work, Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments, in 1954 with a preface by C. S. Lewis. Lewis influenced her work and conversion, and became her second husband after her permanent relocation to England in 1956. She died from metastatic carcinoma involving the bones in 1960.
The relationship that developed between Davidman and Lewis has been featured in a television BBC film, a stage play, and a theatrical film named Shadowlands. Lewis published A Grief Observed under a pseudonym in 1961, from notebooks he kept after his wife's death revealing his immense grief and a period of questioning God.
Helen Joy Davidman was born on 18 April 1915 into a secular middle-class Jewish family in New York City, of Polish and Ukrainian background. Her parents, Joseph Davidman and Jeanette Spivack (married 1909), arrived in America in the late 19th century. Davidman grew up in the Bronx with her younger brother, Howard, and with both parents employed, even during the Great Depression. She was provided with a good education, piano lessons and family vacation trips. Davidman wrote in 1951: "I was a well-brought-up, right-thinking child of materialism... I was an atheist and the daughter of an atheist".
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