Helen Joy Davidman was a brilliant poet and novelist. While many know her as the wife of C.S. Lewis, she was a devout Christian in her own right. Her prodigious output shows she took her writing vocation and faith seriously. So, what can Christians learn from her life and legacy?
Who Was Joy Davidman?
Helen Joy Davidman was born in Upstate New York in 1915 to Joseph and Jeanette Davidman. From a very young age, she was a voracious reader. She showed signs early on of becoming a brilliant writer. Although her family was ethnically Jewish, Joy was raised in a freethinking home which certainly influenced her atheism.
From the start, her family life was difficult. She had issues with her thyroid causing health problems later on, and her parents were very strict towards her. Although she lacked emotional nourishment from her father and mother, Joy excelled in school. Joy received her master’s degree in English Literature from Columbia University, New York, in 1935. Her first book of poetry, Letters To A Comrade, was published in 1938. Joy was 23 at the time. She went on to write her first novel, Anya, which was published in 1940.
Like many Americans in the 1930s and 1940s, Joy became disillusioned with the capitalist system in America and joined the Communist Party. In 1942 she married writer William “Bill” Lindsay Gresham, and they had two sons, David and Douglas. In 1944, Joy became disillusioned with the Communist Party and began questioning her atheism. Joy’s life took quite a revolutionary turn in 1947 when she began reading the writings of Lewis.
How Did Joy Davidman Become a Christian?
In her essay “The Longest Way Round,” published in 1951, Davidman records a powerful spiritual experience of God’s love during a crisis in 1946. She was alone with her boys and needed her husband’s help in a dire situation. After calling Bill on the telephone for help, he told his wife that he was having a nervous breakdown and wasn’t sure when he would return home. Joy felt unsettled and helpless. In her great distress, she prayed to God—asking for help while not knowing if any would come. To her great astonishment, Joy felt an overwhelming sense of God’s love as she prayed. This mystical experience was so revolutionary that she couldn’t write it off as a delusion. In 1947 after much resistance, asking existential questions, praying, and reading C.S. Lewis, Joy embraced faith in Christ.
How Did Joy Davidman Meet C.S. Lewis?
Joy’s friend Chad Walsh encouraged her to write to Lewis, and he received his first letter from her in 1950 at his Oxford home, the Kilns. His brother Warnie served as his secretary and read it first. The wit and intelligence caught Warnie’s attention, and he enthusiastically gave it to his brother to read. Correspondance followed, creating a warm friendship even though Joy and Lewis lived thousands of miles apart.
Because of the great importance of Lewis’s books on Joy’s conversion from atheism to Christianity, she decided to visit him in England with her sons in 1952. At the time, Joy was experiencing great tension in her marriage. Bill had been having various affairs, and while Joy was in England, he decided to divorce her and marry her cousin Renee.
After her divorce in 1953, Joy moved to England with her sons. She found great solace in her friendship with Lewis. They enjoyed going to pubs in Oxford and Cambridge, intellectual debate, and good banter. Soon their friendship blossomed into love. Joy became friends with Warnie, Tolkien’s wife Edith, journalist Jean Wakeman and Lewis’ friend Owen Barfield. With Lewis’ encouragement, Joy finished her book Smoke On The Mountain, published in 1954 with a foreword by Lewis.
To the shock of many of his friends, Lewis married Joy in a civil union in 1956. The practical reason was that Joy had learned her visa would not be renewed (evidently because of her past affiliation with the Communist Party).
A few months later, Joy contracted bone cancer and was hospitalized. Doctors informed Lewis that Joy did not have long to live. The shocking news devastated Lewis. He decided to marry her properly before her death. On March 21, 1957, Joy and Lewis were married by Anglican priest Peter Bide. Bide said a prayer of healing for Joy during the marriage ceremony. After the ceremony, doctors were astonished that Joy went into remission for three years. Those years were the happiest years of her and Lewis’s life. Lewis experienced married life for the first time and possibly true romantic love for the first time. Joy helped Lewis write several books—Till We Have Faces, Reflections On The Psalms, and The Four Loves.
Joy died with Lewis by her side at the Kilns in 1960. Her literary legacy lives on and has inspired many people. The story of her marriage to Lewis became a TV film Shadowlands, followed by a stage play and theatrical film of the same name. More recently, it has inspired New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan to write Becoming Mrs. Lewis.
What Happened to Joy Davidman’s First Husband?
Bill Gresham met Joy when they were both members of the Community Party. Both being writers helped create a strong connection. Bill’s first novel, Nightmare Alley, was published in 1946. The book became a bestseller and was quickly sold to Hollywood—it was adapted into a film in 1947, directed by Edmund Goulding. His other work includes the novel Limbo Tower, a nonfiction book on carnivals called Monster Midway, and a biography of Houdini.
After Joy’s conversion to Christianity, Bill also embraced faith in Christ. However, he later became interested in Scientology and various occult practices.
He married Joy’s cousin, Renee, after divorcing Joy. After Joy’s death, he visited his sons at the Kilns in Oxford. Lewis let him record a session of Lewis reading aloud from his books. Douglas Gresham said in his memoir Lenten Lands that his father was cordial to him, but he always saw Lewis as his true father.
After a cancer diagnosis, BIll Gresham committed suicide at a Manhattan Hotel in 1962. His work has recently gained a higher profile—Guillermo del Toro adapted Nightmare Alley into a film released in 2021.
What Happened to Joy Davidman’s Children?
After Lewis and Joy died, Douglas and David became estranged. David lived in England for several years and embraced Orthodox Judaism, living in Israel for a period. After David’s death at a Swiss mental hospital in 2014, Douglas stated their distant relationship was due to mental health issues that led David to behave violently.
Douglas lived for a time with Jean Wakeman and left England after marrying his wife, Merrie. They moved to Tasmania, Australia, where he sought to be a farmer. During his time in Tasmania, Douglas realized he struggled with pride and surrendered his life to Christ.
Douglas has done various things outside farming, including being a firefighter, pilot, radio announcer, counselor, private detective, and film producer. His film work includes helping produce Disney’s three Narnia films. He has also written several books and spoken worldwide at seminaries, colleges, and universities about his memories of his mother and having Lewis as a stepfather. He currently resides on Malta with Merrie.
I was honored to meet Douglas Gresham in Black Mountain, North Carolina, at a 2017 conference. Since that time, we have corresponded and become friends. The last time I saw him was in 2019 when he came to Taylors, South Carolina, for the Logos Theatre’s play based on The Horse and His Boy. Before the play’s performance, we got to have a rich conversation about Lewis, Joy, Warnie, and Tolkien.
10 Quotes by Joy Davidman
“The words of Jesus are timeless.” — Smoke On The Mountain
“The movies and the poets are right: it does exist!” — Joy telling friend Bel Kaufman about her love for Lewis, C.S. Lewis: Life Works and Legacy, edited by Bruce L. Edwards
“If we should ever grow brave, what on earth would become of us?” — “What Joy Davidman’s Spiritual Journey Teaches Us Today” by Patti Callahan
“We are in the danger of forgetting that God is not only a comfort but a joy. He is the source of all pleasure; he is fun and light and laughter, and we are meant to enjoy him.” — Smoke On The Mountain
“To be Christian is to be reborn, and free, and unafraid, and immortally young.” — Smoke On The Mountain
“Sexuality can become a lasting joy only by coming a sacrament in intention, a means to the service of God-a form through which men and women can feel for each other some slight prefiguring of the divine love. God comes first.” — Smoke On The Mountain
“Let the Church members behave like Christians seven days a week, and it is likely that the Sabbath will take care of itself.” — Smoke On The Mountain
“For how do you make a day holy? By seeing that it is holy already; and behaving accordingly.” — Smoke On The Mountain
“There is, in the last analysis, only one way to stop covetousness and the destruction of body and soul that spring from covetousness, and that is to want God so much that we can’t be bothered with inordinate wants for anything else.” — Smoke On The Mountain
“For the first time my pride was forced to admit that I was not, after all, ‘the master of my fate’... All my defenses—all the walls of arrogance and cocksureness and self-love behind which I had hid from God—went down momentarily—and God came in.” — “Helen Joy Davidman (Mrs. C.S. Lewis) 1915-1960: A Portrait,” by Lyle Wesley Dorsett
10 Books by Joy Davidman
The following includes books where Joy is the sole author, contributor, or editor.
2. Anya
3. Seven Poets in Search of an Answer: A Poetic Symposium, edited by Thomas Yuseloff
4. Weeping Bay
5. Smoke On The Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments
6. Out of My Bone: The Collected Letters of Joy Davidman, edited by Don W. King
7. A Naked Tree: Love Sonnets to C. S. Lewis And Other Poems, edited by Don W. King
8. War Poems of the United Nations: The Songs and Battle Cries of a World at War, edited by Joy Davidman
9. They Look Like Men by Alexander F Bergman, edited by Joy Davidman
10. These Found the Way: Thirteen Converts to Protestant Christianity, edited by David Wesley Soper
In addition, Joy’s poem “Snow in Madrid” was set to music by H. Maurice Jaquet in 1940.
10 Books about Joy Davidman
1. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
2. A Love Observed: Joy Davidman’s Life & Marriage to C.S. Lewis by Lyle Wesley Dorsett
3. Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan
4. Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis by Abigail Santamaria
5. Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis by Douglas Gresham
6. Shadowlands: The True Story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman by Brian Sibley
7. And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman by Lyle Wesley Dorsett
8. Women and C.S. Lewis: What his Life and Literature Reveal for Today’s Culture edited by Carolyn Curtis and Mary Pomroy Key
9. Surprised by Love: The Life of Joy Davidman, Her Life and Marriage to C.S. Lewis by Lyle Wesley Dorsett
10. Yet One More Spring: A Critical Study of Joy Davidman by Don W. King
More information about Joy Davidman can be found in the Wheaton archives.
Photo Credit: Lina Kivaka/Pexels.com
Justin Wiggins is an author who works and lives in the primitive, majestic, beautiful mountains of North Carolina. He graduated with his Bachelor's in English Literature, with a focus on C.S. Lewis studies, from Montreat College in May 2018. His first book was Surprised by Agape, published by Grant Hudson of Clarendon House Publications. His second book, Surprised By Myth, was co-written with Grant Hudson and published in 2021. Many of his recent books (Marty & Irene, Tír na nÓg, Celtic Twilight, Celtic Song, Ragnarok, Celtic Dawn) are published by Steve Cawte of Impspired.
Wiggins has also had poems and other short pieces published by Clarendon House Publications, Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal, and Sweetycat Press. Justin has a great zeal for life, work, community, writing, literature, art, pubs, bookstores, coffee shops, and for England, Scotland, and Ireland.
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