What was the name of the student group J.R.R. Tolkien belonged to at King Edward’s School?

J.R.R. Tolkien belonged to the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, commonly abbreviated as T.C.B.S.

The group formed among friends at King Edward’s School in Birmingham before the First World War. Its members included Tolkien, Geoffrey Bache Smith, Robert Gilson, and Christopher Wiseman. They met to discuss literature, art, mythology, and their ambitions as writers.

The society’s name came from the members’ habit of meeting for tea at the school’s Barrow’s Stores. Their friendship was important to Tolkien’s early intellectual and creative development, although the group was not itself a fantasy-writing club in the modern sense.

The First World War profoundly affected the members. Gilson and Smith were killed in 1916, and Tolkien later connected the group with formative memories of friendship and artistic purpose. The Inklings, by contrast, was Tolkien’s later Oxford literary discussion group.