The group of writers who met with C.S. Lewis at Oxford was called the Inklings.
The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with Oxford during the 1930s and 1940s. Lewis was one of its central members, and J.R.R. Tolkien was another. Members read aloud from unfinished manuscripts, discussed literature, and debated ideas about myth, Christianity, and storytelling.
The group was not a formal society with a fixed membership list or a published program. Its meetings took place mainly in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College and at the Eagle and Child pub, often known by its nickname, the Bird and Baby. Charles Williams and Owen Barfield were also important participants.
A common mistake is to describe the Inklings as an organization that jointly wrote books. They did not co-author a single shared work. Their significance came from criticism and encouragement among friends, which helped shape major works such as Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s fiction.