The Inklings was the Oxford literary fellowship that included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
The Inklings was an informal discussion group rather than an official university society. It met mainly in Oxford during the 1930s and 1940s, with members reading aloud from works in progress and discussing literature, religion, mythology, and writing. Tolkien and Lewis were among its best-known participants.
Meetings were associated with Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College and with the Eagle and Child pub, which members informally called the Bird and Baby. The group had no fixed membership list in the modern club sense, and attendance changed over time.
The Inklings helped create an environment in which Tolkien and Lewis could test ideas and receive reactions to unfinished work. The group did not write a shared book, and it should not be confused with the Bloomsbury Group, a separate British intellectual and artistic circle centered mainly in London.