Joy

Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis

Abigail Santamaria

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780151013715
• eBook ISBN: 9780547843704
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Biographies littéraires

"A lush Narnia tale for grownups": The first comprehensive biography of the rebel thinker who married C. S. Lewis ( Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize winner).
 
If Joy Davidman is known at all, it's as the wife of C. S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia. On her own, she was a poet and radical, a contributor to the communist journal New Masses, and an active member of New York literary circles of the 1930s and '40s. Growing up in a family of Jewish immigrants in the Bronx, she became an atheist, then a practitioner of Dianetics, and finally a Christian convert after experiencing a moment of transcendent grace. She was also a mother, a novelist, a screenwriter, and an intelligent, difficult, and determined woman. In 1952 she set off for England to pursue C. S. Lewis, the man she considered her spiritual guide and her intellectual mentor.
Out of a deep friendship grounded in faith, poetry, and a passion for writing grew a timeless love story, and an unforgettable marriage of equals—one that would be immortalized in the film Shadowlands and Lewis's memoir, A Grief Observed.
"Plumbing the depths of unpublished documents, Santamaria reveals the vision and writing of a young woman whose coming of age in the turbulent thirties is both distinctive and emblematic of her time" (Susan Hertog, author of Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life). Finally, Joy Davidman is brought out of her husband's shadow to secure a place in literary history that is both a long-time coming and well-deserved.
 
"This book gives Davidman her life back. . . . Ms. Santamaria succeeds in de-mythologizing Davidman's story." — The Wall Street Journal
 
"Compelling . . . clear, unsentimental." — The New York Times Book Review
 

Index

Abbott, Charles, 102, 154

Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 60, 65, 122. See also Spanish civil war

American Academy of Arts and Letters (National Institute of Arts and Letters), 84–86

American Communist Party (CPUSA). See CPUSA (American Communist Party)

anticommunism, 185–86, 195–97

antifascism: educational institutions and, 40, 48–49; JD and, 62, 70; League of American Writers and, 59–60, 110–11, 123; Nazism and, 60, 104, 137–38; New Masses and, 70; political events and, 137–38; Stephen Vincent Benét and, 68

anti-Semitism, 6–8, 12–13, 26, 61, 85–87

Appel, Benjamin, 89–90, 108

atheism, 10, 22–23, 90, 105, 113–14, 126–27, 133, 154, 173, 175

Auden, W. H., 87–89, 104, 110, 181–82

Barrington-Ward, Simon, 326

Baumgarten, Bernice, 102, 134–35, 191, 217

Benchley, Robert, 102

Benét, Laura, 135

Benét, Stephen Vincent: appearance and characteristics of, 108–9; League of American Writers and, 109, 111; literary support and critiques for JD, 57–58, 62, 68–69, 71, 73–75, 79, 86, 108–9; MacDowell Colony and, 69–71; National Institute of Arts and Letters and, 85–86; obituary by JD for, 55, 75; politics and, 55, 68, 109; prefaces for Yale Younger Poets and, 56, 74–75; Russell Loines Award and, 86; War Poems of the United Nations (ed. Davidman) and, 135; writings of, 55; Yale University Press publication of JD and, 69–70, 73–77, 79–80, 89, 109; as Yale Younger Poets award editor, 55–58, 68–69, 71, 73–75, 77

Benét, William Rose “Bill”: Hitler-Stalin pact and, 112; JD and, 76, 185–86, 213–15; League of American Writers and, 112, 123; MacDowell Colony and, 73, 185; New Masses and, 79; political events and, 138; sonnets by JD to, 76, 149, 215; War Poems of the United Nations (ed. Davidman) and, 135

Bergman, Alec, 124–25

Bernard Cohen Prize, 42, 45

Bide, Peter, 312, 322–23

Blackmur, R. P., 80

Boyle, Roger, the first Earl of Orrery, 51, 53–54

Brand, Millen, 88

Brandt, Carl, 150

Brandt & Brandt, 150, 180, 191, 269

Brinnin, John Malcolm, 79

Browder, Earl, 65–66, 74, 105

Brown, John, 10, 65

capitalism: CPUSA and, 59, 63, 94; Hollywood and, 62, 99–100, 363n; JD on, 44, 61, 82, 84, 99–100, 363n; League of American Writers and, 59; New Masses and, 59, 78–79

Carpenter, Humphrey,...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• 1892–1930
• 1930–1934
• 1934–1938
• 1938–1939
• June–December 1939
• 1939–1942
• 1942–1944
• 1944–1946
• Photos
• 1946–1950
• 1950–1952
• August 1952–January 1953
• January–November 1953
• November 1953–April 1954
• Fall 1954–October 1956
• Fall 1956–Fall 1957
• 1958–1960
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Photo Credits
• Index
• About the Author