Often referred to as a child prodigy, she earned a master's degree from Columbia University in English literature at age twenty in 1935.

For her book of poems, Letter to a Comrade, she won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 1938 and the Russell Loines Award for Poetry in 1939.

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.

Davidman published her best-known work, Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments, in 1954 with a preface by C. S. Lewis.

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.

"[6] A sickly child, suffering from a crooked spine, scarlet fever and anemia throughout her school years, and attending classes with much older classmates, she later referred to herself at this time as being "bookish, over-precocious and arrogant".

[8] In 1935, she received a master's degree in English literature from Columbia University in three semesters, while also teaching at Roosevelt High School.

[5] During the Great Depression, several incidents, including witnessing the suicide of a hungry orphan jumping off a roof at Hunter College, are said to have caused her to question the fairness of capitalism and the American economic system.

Although much of her work during this period reflected her politics as a member of the American Communist Party, this volume of poetry was much more than implied by the title, and contained forty-five poems written in traditional and free verse that were related to serious topics of the time such as the Spanish Civil War, the inequalities of class structure and male-female relationship issues.

[18] Gresham had at first similar Christian convictions as Joy, but soon rejected them; he continued to have extramarital affairs and developed an interest in tarot cards and the I Ching.

[22] Cynthia Haven speculates that the activities of HUAC might have been a factor in her decision to emigrate and not return, given her political affiliations in the past.

[23] Davidman found a flat in London and enrolled David and Douglas at Dane Court Preparatory School,[24] but she soon ran into financial difficulties when Gresham stopped sending money for support.

Joy was the only woman whom he had met... who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humour and a sense of fun.

"[4] She 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.

[28] Davidman's book Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments was published in 1955 in England with a preface by C. S. Lewis.

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

This was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, because she was divorced, but a friend and Anglican priest, the Reverend Peter Bide,[34] performed the ceremony at Davidman's hospital bed on 21 March 1957.

In April 1960, Lewis took Davidman on a holiday to Greece to fulfil her lifelong wish to visit there, but her condition worsened quickly upon return from the trip, and she died on 13 July 1960.

[9][37] As a widower, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed which he published under the pseudonym of N. W. Clerk, describing his feelings and paying tribute to his wife.

[40] Nicholson's work drew in part from Douglas Gresham's book Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and CS Lewis.

[42][43] A cinema film version was released in 1993, with Anthony Hopkins as Jack (C. S. Lewis) and Debra Winger (in an Academy Award-nominated performance) as Joy Davidman.

[45] Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind) Like cast off clothes was left behind In ashes, yet with hopes that she, Re-born from holy poverty, In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day.