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What happened to C.S. Lewis's wife?
The great tragedy of CS Lewis's life was the loss of his wife, Joy Davidman, to cancer in 1960. Her death tested the faith of the Chronicles of Narnia author, who was also a prominent Christian thinker.
Did C.S. Lewis and his wife consummate their marriage?
Lewis never consummated their marriage, trying perhaps to preserve a particular image of St. Jack (e.g., Through Joy and Beyond, 151). And in reaction, A.N. Wilson suggests in his biography that they were having a sexualized affair of sorts (see his euphemized chapter title, “Smoke on the Mountain”).
Who was C.S. Lewis married to?
Joy DavidmanC. S. Lewis / Spouse (m. 1956–1960)In 1956, Lewis married American writer Joy Davidman; she died of cancer four years later at the age of 45. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 from kidney failure, one week before his 65th birthday.
Did C.S. Lewis have two wives?
Fans of C.S. Lewis will know that he was married to Joy Davidman Gresham but many are surprised to hear Lewis actually married her twice . . .
What is CS Lewis most famous quote?
1. "There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” 2.
How old was CS Lewis when he met his wife?
Lewis lived a long and full life before meeting his eventual wife, Joy Davidman. The two began a friendship before marrying in 1956, when Lewis was 58 and Davidman was 41. From this marriage Lewis gained two stepsons, Douglas and David.
Why did Tolkien and Lewis fall out?
Lewis thought Tolkien's was too long and complicated, and Tolkien thought Lewis' allegory was too simple and was surprised it was so popular. Their differences did not prevent them from respecting each other's work and enjoying each other's company. In fact, mutual criticism made each a better writer.
What were C.S. Lewis's last words?
On the day he died, the December 21st issue of The Saturday Evening Post was heading to press. In it were the last words written by Lewis for publication, a short opinion piece titled “We Have No Right to Happiness.” It could have been written today, and certainly should be read today.
Did C.S. Lewis have any children?
Despite writing a popular book series for children, C.S. Lewis had no children of his own. He did have two stepsons, Douglas and David, from his marriage to Joy Davidman in 1956. Douglas was 11 and David was 12, and the two would continue to live with Lewis after their mother's death in 1960.
What happened to Joy Greshams son?
After his parents divorced in 1952, his mother relocated to England with her two sons. Up until recently Douglas and his wife, Merrie, lived at Rathvinden House in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland. In 2008, the same year of the premiere of Prince Caspian, they moved permanently to their house in Malta.
What does C.S. Lewis say about marriage?
Joy DavidmanC. S. Lewis / Spouse (m. 1956–1960)Helen Joy Davidman 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 at age twenty in 1935. Wikipedia
Was C.S. Lewis a Catholic or Protestant?
Although C. S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity was greatly influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien, a Catholic, and although Lewis embraced many distinctively Catholic teachings, such as purgatory and the sacrament of Confession, he never formally entered the Church.
Did Joy Davidman's husband marry her cousin?
Gresham was living in the United States at the time, and had become involved with Davidman's cousin. Their marriage was tumultuous, complicated by financial difficulties, as well as Gresham's alcoholism, infidelity, and violent outbursts.
Did Tolkien have a happy marriage?
J.R.R. Tolkien was happily married for 55 years. In contrast, the modern divorce rate is shockingly high, and some are giving up on monogamous marriage altogether, claiming it simply isn't possible or healthy. What did Tolkien have that many marriages do not?
Is becoming Mrs Lewis a true story?
First published in October 2018, Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan (Henry) is a work of historical fiction inspired by the life of New York writer Joy Davidman and her improbable love story with the Oxford don, and famous Christian author, C.S. Lewis.
How long was CS Lewis married to Joy Davidman?
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....Joy DavidmanSpousesWilliam Lindsay Gresham ( m. 1942; div. 1954) C. S. Lewis ( m. 1956)Children2, David and Douglas Gresham6 more rows
What did CS Lewis write about his wife?
‘I too have lost what I most loved’: the author CS Lewis writes about the death of his wife, Joy Davidman. ‘I too have lost what I most loved’: the author CS Lewis writes about the death of his wife, Joy Davidman.
What was the tragedy of CS Lewis?
The great tragedy of CS Lewis ’s life was the loss of his wife, Joy Davidman, to cancer in 1960. Her death tested the faith of the Chronicles of Narnia author, who was also a prominent Christian thinker.
What was the book that Lewis wrote about his wife's death?
They married in 1956. When she died of bone cancer, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed, his classic 1961 work on mourning and how faith can survive it. The book helped inspire a TV movie and stage play, Shadowlands, and an Oscar-nominated 1993 film of the same name, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
How many volumes of Lewis' letters are there?
Peterson said: “There are three volumes of Lewis’s letters out there – and now five others show up. Just to see the handwriting, you get a little sense of … Lewis’s personality. He was a very intense but warm person. That comes across.”
What is Lewis' personality?
Just to see the handwriting, you get a sense of Lewis’s personality. He was a very intense but warm person
When did Lewis die?
Lewis died just weeks later, on 22 November, and the letters give a sense of how he spent his final days. Although he had invited Van Osdall, professor of chemistry at Ashland University, Ohio, to visit him in Britain, he had also told him of his serious physical decline: “My life has undergone a great change,” he wrote.
Who was the first to expose Lewis fan base?
Peterson realised the significance of the correspondence as soon as he saw it, he told the Observer: “The university called me to assess the letters and gave me permission to be the first to expose these to the Lewis fan base and to the world.”
Who was Lewis' mother?
His mother was Florence Augusta Lewis, née Hamilton (1862–1908), known as Flora, the daughter of The Reverend Thomas Hamilton, a Church of Ireland priest, and great granddaughter of both Bishop Hugh Hamilton and John Staples. He had an elder brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis (known as "Warnie").
What did Lewis love to do as a boy?
As a boy, Lewis was fascinated with anthropomorphic animals; he fell in love with Beatrix Potter 's stories and often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. Along with his brother Warnie, he created the world of Boxen, a fantasy land inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read from an early age. His father's house was filled with books; he later wrote that finding something to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass".
What was Lewis' first army training?
Lewis entered Oxford in the 1917 summer term, studying at University College, and shortly after, he joined the Officers' Training Corps at the university as his "most promising route into the army". From there, he was drafted into a Cadet Battalion for training. After his training, he was commissioned into the Third Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry of the British Army as a Second Lieutenant. Within months of entering Oxford, the British Army shipped him to France to fight in the First World War.
How old was Lewis when he adopted Jacksie?
When his dog Jacksie was killed by a car, the four-year old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie. At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life. When he was seven, his family moved into "Little Lea", the family home of his childhood, in the Strandtown area of East Belfast.
What did Lewis experience when he first arrived in England?
"The strange English accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons. But what was worst was the English landscape ... I have made up the quarrel since; but at that moment I conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal."
How did Lewis die?
Lewis died on 22 November 1963 from kidney failure, one week before his 65th birthday. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis was honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey .
Why was Lewis on the last list of honours?
Lewis was named on the last list of honours by George VI in December 1951 as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) but declined so as to avoid association with any political issues.
Where did Lewis go to college?
Lewis went on to become a professor of English at Cambridge University, England, in 1954. Widely read as an adult, his knowledge of literature made him much sought after for his company and conversation. Lewis thoroughly enjoyed sitting up into the late hours in college rooms talking about literature, poetry, and religion.
What was Lewis' role in World War 1?
During World War I (1914–18), which began as a conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia but eventually involved much of Europe, Lewis served as a second lieutenant in the English army, interrupting his career as a scholar that he had begun in 1918 at University College, Oxford.
What was Lewis' first book?
In 1926 Lewis's first publication, Dymer, appeared under the pseudonym (fake writing name) Clive Hamilton. Dymer revealed Lewis's gift for satire (a work of literature that makes fun of human vice or foolishness). The Pilgrims' Regress, an allegory (an expression of truths about human existence using symbols) published in 1933, presented an apology for Christianity. It was not until the appearance of his second allegorical work, The Allegory of Love (1936), however, that Lewis was honored with the coveted Hawthornden prize.
Where was Clive Staples born?
Early life and education. On November 29, 1898, Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland. He was the son of A. J. Lewis, a lawyer, and Flora August Hamilton Lewis, a mathematician (expert in mathematics), whose father was a minister.
Why did Joy drive the final nails in the coffin of her marriage?
In fact, through recently discovered letters and poems and writings, we get the impression that Joy drove the final nails in the coffin of her marriage in order to free herself up for Lewis romantically.
Did Joy lose her marriage?
The plan backfired. Even though there was no accidental meeting, and even though Joy was a strong-willed woman who carefully manipulated situations in order to maximize the possibility that she would win the heart of this bachelor writer with whom she had found such an affinity, the plan failed. Joy lost her marriage well before she won Lewis’s heart.
Did Lewis know Joy's machinations?
Just how much Lewis knew of Joy’s machinations is impossible to surmise , but it is clear that there were indeed machinations to know of! Strikingly, when Lewis later wrote Joy’s ex-husband about the past, he did not take Joy’s side.
Did Lewis write Joy's ex husband about the past?
Strikingly, when Lewis later wrote Joy’s ex-husband about the past, he did not take Joy’s side. Instead, he claimed that he could not adjudicate between the two regarding whose fault the divorce was. This is surprising, considering that Lewis was deeply in love with Joy at this time and surely knew of Gresham’s infidelities and abusive language. But love, at least at this point, was not blind. Lewis knew Joy well enough to see that her portrayal of life with Gresham was one-sided and not always accurate.
Who is Lewis' brother?
Lenten Lands is Douglas’s memoir of his life at The Kilns in Oxford with his brother David, his mother, Lewis, and Lewis’s brother Warnie. A poignant and powerful account of his mother’s death as well as Lewis’s last days, ...
Who did Douglas live with after Jack's death?
After Jack’s death, Douglas went to live with journalist Jean Wakeman. (J.R.R. Tolkien, whom he’d met at the Inklings meetings Lewis often took him to as a boy, also offered to take him in if he needed a place to stay.)
Was Lewis and Joy Davidman stepfathers?
While the relationship between Lewis and Joy Davidman has been a matter of endless fascination to Lewis fans and academics alike, many have ignored the fact that the marriage made Lewis a stepfather. But Davidman’s boys (ages 11 and 12 at the time of the marriage) became Lewis’s stepsons, and these relationships shaped the last decade of his life. Lewis dedicated The Horse and His Boy to Douglas and David Gresham. While Douglas has weighed in with two books— Lenten Lands and a short biography of Lewis—David has virtually vanished from the historical record. In the 1993 film Shadowlands, for example, David Gresham is nonexistent. Even in his brother’s memoir he makes only a handful of brief appearances.
Did Lewis struggle to help his mentally ill stepson?
For decades, despite a booming cottage industry of Lewis biographies and endless academic theorizing about the last years of Lewis’s life, Douglas kept to himself the fact that Lewis struggled mightily to help his mentally ill stepson. “We didn’t tell anybody,” he told me. “The only reason I’m releasing it now is because people should know what Jack put up with and what Warnie put up with and how heroic they were to do it at all.” It is time, he added, “that people understand what Jack and Warnie went through. Jack and Warnie didn’t know what the heck to do.”
Who is credited with writing the books that Lewis wrote?
Early in his career, his first two books of poetry, Spirits in Bondage and Dymer, were both credited to Clive Hamilton (Clive is his actual first name and Hamilton is his mother’s maiden name). Then, before he died, A Grief Observed was published (in 1961) under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk. That book recounts some of the sorrow Lewis experienced after the death of his wife. It was republished the year after his own death with him identified as the author.
Why is Lewis on the cover of Time magazine?
The article on Lewis came out a few months after his latest book, Miracles: A Preliminary Study, was released. The reason for this honor was due to his popularity from his fictionalized correspondence between two demons in The Screwtape Letters. A casual look at the cover reveals this, as you see a pitchforked devil on his left shoulder and the wing of an angel over his head.
What was Lewis' first book?
It’s no secret Lewis enjoyed writing, but his original passion was poetry. In 1919, before his 21st birthday, his first book, Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics, was published. Nearly all of the book was written when he was 16 or 17 years old.
Who refused to teach at Cambridge?
As Alister McGrath recounts in C. S. Lewis: A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet, after Lewis had twice declined the offer to teach at Cambridge, Tolkien wouldn’t let the matter go. He sought clarification from Lewis about why he refused the offer.
Who did Lewis and Janie King Moore live with?
When Paddy was killed in World War I, Lewis made good on his promise and lived with Janie King Moore until just before she died.
Did Lewis and Joy marry?
Most are aware Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, but did you know he tied the knot with her twice? The first time was on April 23, 1956, in a civil ceremony. He did it as a friendly gesture to prevent Joy from deportation from England (she was an American). Less than a year later, when it was thought she would soon die from cancer, he married her again at Churchill Hospital on March 21, 1957. So, why do it again? Few actually knew about the first wedding, so it was in part because he wanted to declare his love for her before others. This part of Lewis’s life was the subject of the movie Shadowlands that was first produced by BBC in 1985 and later a Hollywood movie in 1993.
Why did Lewis have a wavering faith?
In the book, he recounts his wavering faith due to the overwhelming grief which he suffered after Davidman's death, and his struggle to regain that faith. Lewis developed a heart condition two years later and went into a coma, from which he recovered, but he died a year later—three years after his wife.
What did Warren Lewis write in his diary?
In March 1957, Warren Lewis wrote in his diary: "One of the most painful days of my life. Sentence of death has been passed on Joy, and the end is only a matter of time.". The Kilns, the Lewis home in Oxford.
When did Davidman and Gresham divorce?
He married Rodriguez when the divorce became final in August 1954 . Confessing to be a "complete Anglomaniac ", Davidman returned to England with her sons in November 1953.
When did Warren Lewis meet Davidman?
Davidman first met Lewis in August 1952, when she made a trip to the United Kingdom. She planned to finish her book on the Ten Commandments, which showed influences of Lewis's style of apologetics. After several lunch meetings and walks accompanying Davidman and his brother, Warren Lewis wrote in his diary that "a rapid friendship" had developed between his younger brother and Davidman, whom he described as "a Christian convert of Jewish race, medium height, good figure, horn rimmed specs, quite extraordinarily uninhibited." She spent Christmas and a fortnight at The Kilns with the brothers. Though Davidman was deeply in love with Lewis, there was no reciprocation on his side.
Did Davidman and Hubbard live together?
Ron Hubbard's theories of Dianetics and "audited" each other and friends. The couple became estranged, even though they continued to live together. After an introduction by a fellow American writer, Chad Walsh, Davidman began a correspondence with C. S. Lewis in 1950.
Did Davidman love Lewis?
She spent Christmas and a fortnight at The Kilns with the brothers. Though Davidman was deeply in love with Lewis, there was no reciprocation on his side. She returned home in January 1953, having received a letter from Gresham that he and her cousin were having an affair and he wanted a divorce.
Overview
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge University (Magdalene College, 1954–1963). He is best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but he is also noted for his other works of fi…
Biography
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in Ulster, Ireland (before partition), on 29 November 1898. His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), a solicitor whose father Richard Lewis had come to Ireland from Wales during the mid-19th century. Lewis's mother was Florence Augusta Lewis née Hamilton (1862–1908), known as Flora, the daughter of Thomas Hamilton, a Church of Ir…
Career
Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford University, where he won a triple first, the highest honours in three areas of study. He was then elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he worked for nearly thirty years, from 1925 to 1954. In 1954, he was awarded the newly founded chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge Uni…
Legacy
Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In 2008, The Times ranked him eleventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Readers of his fiction are often unaware of what Lewis considered the Christian themes of his works. His Christian apologetics are read and quoted by members of many Christian denominations. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis j…
See also
• Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, has the world's largest collection of works by and about Lewis
• Courtly love
• Johan Huizinga
• D. W. Robertson, Jr.
Notes
1. ^ Lewis, C.S. (1952). Mere Christianity. New York: Harper Collins. p. viii. ISBN 9780061947438.
2. ^ Bennett, Jack Arthur Walter; Plaskitt, Emma Lisa (2008) [2004]. "Lewis, Clive Staples (1898–1963)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34512. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Further reading
• Anon. (4 December 2005). "If you didn't find Narnia in your own wardrobe ..." The Guardian. No. 4–12. London. Archived from the original on 6 May 2018. Retrieved 5 May 2018.
• Barker, Dan (1992). Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. Madison: Freedom from Religion Foundation. ISBN 978-1-877733-07-9.
External links
• Works by C. S. Lewis in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
• Works by Clive Staples Lewis at Project Gutenberg
• Works by C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis at Faded Page (Canada)
• Works by or about C. S. Lewis at Internet Archive