Which group did J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis belong to at Oxford?

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis belonged to the Inklings. The Inklings were an informal Oxford literary discussion group that met mainly in the 1930s and 1940s.

The group was not a formal society with a fixed membership list or constitution. Its participants read aloud from works in progress, discussed literature, and debated ideas about Christianity, myth, and storytelling. Tolkien shared portions of The Lord of the Rings with the group, while Lewis developed and discussed several of his own literary works in the same intellectual environment.

Meetings were associated with Oxford locations including Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College and the Eagle and Child pub, which members nicknamed the Bird and Baby. The pub association is famous, but the Inklings were fundamentally a literary and friendship network rather than a publishing organization. Other participants included Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Warren Lewis.