Which poet and novelist was C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Inkling at Oxford?

J.R.R. Tolkien was C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Inkling at Oxford. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, helped encourage Lewis’s return to Christianity.

The two writers met at Oxford and became part of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that met mainly at the Eagle and Child pub and in Oxford colleges. Members read drafts aloud and debated literature, language, mythology, and theology.

Lewis admired Tolkien’s scholarship and imagination, while Tolkien valued Lewis’s enthusiasm for his developing mythology. Their friendship did not eliminate disagreements: Tolkien disliked some aspects of Lewis’s Narnia books, particularly their mixture of different mythological traditions.

Their association is often simplified into a partnership, but each created an independent body of work. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia and many works of Christian thought; Tolkien created Middle-earth.