24 Facts About Joy Davidman

Helen Joy Davidman was an American poet and writer.

Joy Davidman was the author of several books, including two novels.

Joy Davidman died from metastatic carcinoma involving the bones in 1960.

Helen Joy Davidman was born on 18 April 1915 into a secular middle-class Jewish family in New York City of Polish-Jewish and Russian-Jewish descent.

Joy Davidman grew up in the Bronx with her younger brother, Howard, and with both parents employed, even during the Great Depression.

Joy Davidman was provided with a good education, piano lessons and family vacation trips.

Joy Davidman was a child prodigy, who scored above 150 on IQ testing, with exceptional critical, analytical and musical skills.

Joy Davidman read H G Wells's The Outline of History at the age of eight and was able to play a score of Chopin on the piano after having read it once and not looking at it again.

In 1936, after several of Joy Davidman's poems were published in Poetry, editor Harriet Monroe asked her to work for the magazine as reader and editor.

Joy Davidman resigned her teaching position to work full-time in writing and editing.

Joy Davidman was employed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1939 for a six-month stay in Hollywood writing movie scripts.

Joy Davidman married her first husband, author William Lindsay Gresham, on 24 August 1942 after becoming acquainted with him through their mutual interest in communism.

Bill Gresham had become disillusioned with the Communist Party while volunteering in Spain during the Spanish Civil War to fight fascism and influenced Joy Davidman to leave the party after the birth of their sons.

Joy Davidman wrote that her husband had telephoned her one day in spring 1946 telling her that he was having a nervous breakdown and did not know when he would return home.

When Gresham received a large sum for the movie rights to Nightmare Alley, the family moved to an old mansion with acreage in the New York countryside, where Joy Davidman began to write her second novel, Weeping Bay and Gresham started his second novel, Limbo Tower.

Joy Davidman first met Lewis in August 1952 when she made a trip to the United Kingdom.

Joy Davidman planned to finish her book on the Ten Commandments, which showed influences of Lewis's style of apologetics.

Joy Davidman 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.

Joy Davidman intended to try to save the marriage, but she agreed to a divorce after a violent encounter with Gresham, who had resumed drinking.

Joy Davidman married Rodriguez when the divorce became final in August 1954.

Joy Davidman found a flat in London and enrolled David and Douglas at Dane Court Preparatory School, but she soon ran into financial difficulties when Gresham stopped sending money for support.

Joy Davidman was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier.

In October 1956, Joy Davidman was walking across her kitchen when she tripped over the telephone wire and fell to the floor, thereby breaking her left upper leg.

Joy Davidman helped Lewis with his writing, organised his financial records and wardrobe, and had the house renovated and redecorated.