Joy Davidman

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Helen Joy Davidman , also Joy Gresham (born April 18, 1915 in New York City , † July 13, 1960 ), was an American writer .

Life

Joy grew up in a Jewish family in New York. Even in her earliest childhood she was often sickly and at times also wore a radium collar . In her youth she became a radical communist and married the writer William Lindsay Gresham . The marriage had two children: Douglas and David. After converting to Christianity in the late 1940s , she went to England with her sons to meet the Christian writer CS Lewis , whose writings she had influenced significantly. After her husband cheated on her in her absence, she divorced and moved all over to England with Douglas and David. A close friendship developed between Davidman and Lewis, who found in her a woman who was intellectually equal to him. Davidman and Lewis got married in order to secure her stay in England. This was a real scandal for the church as Joy was a divorced Jewish communist. They lived with Lewis and his brother Warren in their house, Lewis adopted the children. A little later, Joy was diagnosed with bone cancer . Through her sudden onset of illness, Lewis discovered his love for her and found a priest who trusted her in a Christian bedside manner. Joy recovered from cancer, but died in 1960 at the age of 45 in the home of the Lewis brothers.

Richard Attenborough filmed the love story between CS Lewis and Gresham in 1993 under the title Shadowlands .

Works

  • 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 CS Lewis. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1954. (Translated into German by Peter Nabholz, published as Rauch über dem Berg . Claren, Lüdenscheid 1984. ISBN 3-922549-11-X .)

literature

  • Brian Sibley: Late love. CS Lewis and Joy Davidman. Brunnen-Verlag, Giessen et al. 1997, ISBN 3-7655-3976-7 ( ABC-team 3976).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Davidman, Joy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Davidman, Helen Joy (full name); Gresham, Joy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1960