Lewis’s friendship with and erican fan Joy Davidman, and her subsequent death from cancer, has been the subject of many articles and books, a play, a film, and television drama. For Lewis, Joy Davidman’s appearance in his life must have seemed extraordinary. Though he was now a famous writer, he was also fifty-four years old: a heavy man with a booming voice, shabbily dressed and awkward around women. (“I am tall, fat, bald, red-faced, double-chinned…and wear glasses,” he had written to a class of fifth-graders in America who had asked for a description of himself.) Joy was thirty-seven, a nonpracticing Jew and former Communist from New York, who had begun writing Lewis in 1950 and in 1952 came to England in order to meet him. She was small, dark, attractive, lively, tough, and outspoken. She also regarded Lewis as one of the greatest men of his time, whose works had inspired her conversion to Christianity. (The coincidence of her first name with Lewis’s private term for peak experiences of literature and nature may have appeared miraculous; it was also the hidden message in the title he later chose for his autobiography, Surprised by Joy.)
Joy Davidman was certainly a surprise to his friends. Continue reading “The other romantic relationship in Lewis’s life is far better documented-perhaps overdocumented”