Joy Davidman, Poet: "Letter to a Comrade"

Although best known as the wife of C. S. Lewis, Joy Davidman was a gifted writer. In particular she was a very good poet; her Letter to a Comrade (1938) won both the Yale Younger Poet competition and the Russell Loines Memorial award for poetry given by the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In this essay I sketch the development of Davidman as a poet, explore a thematic discussion of the poems in Letter to a Comrade, and offer a brief critical assessment of the volume as a whole.