What name is given to the group that included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis?

The group that included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis was called the Inklings.

The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with Oxford. They met regularly from the 1930s into the early 1950s, often at Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College and at the Eagle and Child pub, which members nicknamed the Bird and Baby. Tolkien and Lewis read drafts of works aloud and discussed literature, mythology, religion, and language.

Other participants included Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Warren Lewis, and Hugo Dyson. Membership was informal and changed over time, so the Inklings were not a society with a fixed official roster or constitution.

Tolkien and Lewis influenced each other as friends and fellow writers, although their careers and styles differed. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia were developed in this broader Oxford literary environment. The Inklings should not be confused with the Bloomsbury Group, a different circle of British writers and artists associated mainly with London.