C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were members of the Oxford literary group called The Inklings.
The Inklings was an informal discussion group associated with Oxford University. It met mainly at The Eagle and Child pub, known to members as the Bird and Baby, and also in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College. Members read unfinished work aloud, discussed literature, and debated ideas about myth, Christianity, and storytelling.
Lewis and Tolkien were among the group’s best-known participants, but The Inklings was not a formal society with a fixed membership list or constitution. Charles Williams and Owen Barfield were also important members. The group’s name was a playful adaptation of an earlier Oxford reading group called the Inklings.
Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s fiction are often discussed together because of this friendship, but the authors had different styles and literary aims. The Inklings provided a setting for exchange and criticism rather than a joint authorship project.