What was the name of C.S. Lewis’s informal Oxford literary group?

C.S. Lewis’s informal Oxford literary group was called The Inklings.

The Inklings were an informal discussion group associated with Oxford University, active chiefly during the 1930s and 1940s. Lewis was one of its leading members, and the group included J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Warren Lewis among others.

Members read drafts of fiction, poetry, and scholarship aloud and discussed them. The meetings were held in Oxford rooms and pubs, including The Eagle and Child, which became strongly associated with the group. The Inklings were not a formal society with a fixed membership list or published manifesto.

Lewis and Tolkien’s friendship is often treated as the group’s defining connection, but The Inklings included a wider circle. The name is a pun on “ink” and the idea of a partial or emerging notion. It should not be confused with Bloomsbury, a different literary and artistic network.