J.R.R. Tolkien was the friend and fellow author who helped inspire C.S. Lewis’s interest in mythology and fantasy. The two met at Oxford and became members of the literary discussion group known as the Inklings.
Their conversations covered mythology, language, literature, religion, and imaginative storytelling. Lewis admired Tolkien’s scholarship and fiction, while Tolkien encouraged Lewis during his movement back toward Christianity. Their friendship influenced the intellectual environment in which both writers developed their major works.
Tolkien did not write the Narnia books, and Lewis did not write The Lord of the Rings. Their works belong to different fictional universes, although both drew on mythic traditions and Christian ideas. Charles Williams and Owen Barfield were also important members of the Inklings, but Tolkien is the best-known fellow author associated with Lewis’s imaginative development.