C.S. Lewis joined J.R.R. Tolkien in The Inklings, an informal literary discussion group. The group met mainly in Oxford from the 1930s through the early 1950s.
Members and guests read drafts of fiction, poetry, and scholarly work aloud, then discussed them. Lewis and Tolkien were central figures, and other participants included Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson, and Warren Lewis.
The Inklings were not a formal society with a published constitution or fixed membership list. Their meetings took place in places including the Eagle and Child pub, often called the Bird and Baby, and Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College. The group’s name referred to literary ideas or “inklings,” not to a specific university department.
The friendship between Lewis and Tolkien helped sustain both writers, although they did not agree on every literary or religious question. Tolkien’s readings of The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s readings of his own works are among the group’s best-known associations.