Two Anniversaries for 7/13 (Joy's Death & Broadcast Talks Published)

There are two anniversaries for today in the life of C.S. Lewis.

The one that impacted him the most was the death of his wife (Helen) Joy Davidman on July 13, 1960. His love story to her was (imperfectly) presented in the Hollywood movie Shadowlands, but there was also another version produced by the BBC in 1985 that is now retitled C.S. Lewis: Though the Shadowlands.

It would be impossible to recount her life and influence in Jack’s life. Previously I did a post about Lewis marrying Joy twice and  had an interview with Dr. Don King at the first of this year about his 2009 book Out of My Bone: The Letters of Joy Davidman. Consider checking these resources to learn more about her. Also, among the many articles online about Joy’s life, here’s three you might find most helpful:

• Helen Joy Davidman (Mrs. C.S. Lewis) 1915-1960: A Portrait – This is an article by Lyle W. Dorsett that is from the C.S. Lewis Institute’s site and is adapted from the first edition (1983) of the biography he did on Joy.

• Extraordinary Joy -  From the Boundless Webzine done by Focus on the Family. It is written by Anne Morse.

• Link to text of Smoke on the Mountain – This not an article about her, but the complete text of her book. Thanks to an article from A Pilgrim in Narnia blog about Incredible Web Resources by The Journal of Inklings Studies for pointing out this information to me.

The second anniversary for this date is from 1942. This is when Broadcast Talks were first published on July 13th. Don’t recognize the title? A year later it was released in the U.S. as The Case for Christianity and then in 1952 (earlier this month) it became a part of Mere Christianity.

Consider reading my post from the 7th of this month entitled 60th Anniversary of Mere Christianity which contains some links for information about the book.

Do you have any reflections/thoughts or questions about Joy or the book that kicked off Mere Christianity? Tell me about it with a comment below!

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