C. S. Lewis was Tolkien’s academic friend and the author of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Tolkien and Lewis met at Oxford and became members of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that included writers such as Charles Williams and Owen Barfield. They read drafts aloud, discussed mythology and Christianity, and encouraged one another’s writing.
Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien’s Middle-earth books are distinct fictional worlds, but both writers drew on myth, medieval literature, and Christian ideas. Lewis helped encourage Tolkien during the development of The Lord of the Rings, although their friendship later became more distant.
Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and six further Narnia novels. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Charles Williams was another Inkling, while Dorothy Sayers was a different writer associated with detective fiction and Christian literary circles.