Published here for the first time, with an introduction from Lewis scholar Don W. King, these twenty-five letters written by Joy Davidman exhibit her characteristic wit and intelligence and detail her first visit to England and her developing relationship with her future husband, C.S. Lewis.
Joy Davidman (1915-1960) was an American poet and writer and, toward the end of her life, the wife of British author C.S. Lewis. She received the 1938 Yale Younger Poets Prize for her book Letter to a Comrade and the Russell Loines Award for Poetry in 1939. Her published books include Anya, Weeping Bay, and Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments. In 2015, Don W. King published a selection of her previously unpublished poetry as A Naked Tree: Love Sonnets to C.S. Lewis and Other Poems.
On the faculty of Montreat College since 1974, Don W. King is a faculty fellow and professor of English. From 1999 to 2015 he served as editor of the Christian Scholar’s Review. His more than eighty essays and reviews have appeared in Books & Culture, Christianity and Literature, VII, Literature and Religion, The Journal of Inklings Studies, Studies in the Literary Imagination, The C.S. Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia, and C.S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy. He is the author of eleven books, including C.S. Lewis, Poet: The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse, Plain to the Inward Eye: Selected Essays on C.S. Lewis, The Collected Poems of C.S. Lewis: A Critical Edition, and Inkling, Soldier, Historian, and Brother: A Life of Warren Hamilton Lewis.
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VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center
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