The Inklings was the informal literary society associated with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford. The group met mainly during the 1930s and 1940s to read aloud and discuss works in progress.
Members and regular participants included Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield. Meetings took place in Oxford rooms and pubs, especially The Eagle and Child, which became popularly known as the Bird and Baby. The group was not a formal club with a fixed membership list or constitution.
Lewis and Tolkien read portions of major works to one another in this setting. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s fiction benefited from the encouragement and criticism of their friends, although the Inklings did not publish a collective journal. The name is often mistakenly treated as an official organization, but it primarily describes a conversational literary circle.