Sheldon Vanauken (/vəˈnɔːkən/;[1] August 4, 1914 – October 18, 1996) was an American author, best known for his autobiographical book A Severe Mercy (1977), which recounts his and his wife's friendship with C. S. Lewis, their conversion to Christianity, and dealing with tragedy.
[7] His father was a self-made lawyer who became influential in local politics,[8] served as a state senator, and owned the Indiana Broadcasting Company.
[10] He earned his undergraduate degree from Wabash College in 1938,[11] where he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity,[12] and later attended Yale and Oxford Universities.
Davy had been educated at Troy Conference Academy, a Vermont boarding school, but had to withdraw due to lack of funds after her father's death.
[17] Shortly after beginning her studies there, she met Sheldon Vanauken at the Indianapolis department store where she worked hand-tinting photographs to earn her tuition.
They were married secretly (due, according to A Severe Mercy, to Van's father's objection to early marriages) on October 1, 1937,[18] ten months after they met.
[19] Vanauken inherited a substantial amount of money and used some of it to have a boat built which they named Grey Goose, for the bird which remains true to one mate throughout life.
Following Van's studies in history at Yale, from which he received a master's degree in 1948, and a stint in the Navy stationed in Hawaii, the young couple spent considerable time sailing Grey Goose around Chesapeake Bay, the Florida Keys, and the Caribbean.
However, when postwar travel to Europe became possible again, he took a sabbatical and he and Davy moved to England so that he could study at Oxford University (where he was awarded a BLitt in 1957).
Eventually, Davy "crossed the room" to become a devout Anglican Christian herself; she had reexamined her life and views on the nature of sin after a thwarted attempt by a stranger to assault her.
At the time of her diagnosis in the summer of 1954, Vanauken had just resigned to accept a job offer from his alma mater, Wabash College, but asked Lynchburg to rehire him in order to stay near Davy's doctors, which they did.
After his conversion to Catholicism, he was a contributing editor of the New Oxford Review and a frequent contributor to Crisis and Southern Partisan[25] magazines, as well as to other periodicals and newspapers.
[27] His ashes were scattered in the churchyard of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Forest, Virginia, as those of his wife Davy had been forty years previously.