What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s invented group of stories about an imaginary club of time-traveling scholars?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s invented group of stories about time-traveling scholars is called The Notion Club Papers.

Tolkien wrote The Notion Club Papers in the 1940s as an unfinished frame narrative. It presents minutes and discussions of a fictional Oxford society whose members investigate dreams, language, history, and visions that seem connected to distant times and places. The device allowed Tolkien to combine modern academic conversation with mythic material.

The work is especially notable for its connection to Númenor and the legend of its destruction. Some passages anticipate ideas later associated with Tolkien’s Middle-earth writings, including the catastrophic flooding of a great island civilization. The imagined society also reflects Tolkien’s interest in philology, intellectual friendship, and the relationship between stories and recovered history.

The title is sometimes confused with The Book of Lost Tales, which is an early collection of Tolkien’s mythology, or with The Red Book of Westmarch, the fictional source associated with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Notion Club Papers remained unfinished during Tolkien’s lifetime and was published posthumously.