J.R.R. Tolkien was C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Oxford writer who died in 1973.
Lewis and Tolkien belonged to the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that met mainly at Oxford’s Eagle and Child pub and in college rooms. Their conversations included mythology, language, literary craft, and Christianity. Tolkien’s developing work on Middle-earth and Lewis’s imaginative fiction benefited from this intellectual friendship.
Tolkien was a philologist and medievalist best known for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Lewis, who taught literature and wrote Christian apologetics as well as fiction, admired Tolkien’s scholarship and imaginative power. Their friendship was important, although it included periods of tension and did not remain uniformly close throughout their lives.
Charles Williams and Owen Barfield were also associated with the Inklings, which can make identification questions confusing. Williams died in 1945, Barfield in 1997, and Tolkien in 1973. Tolkien’s death date is the decisive clue here.