J.R.R. Tolkien was the writer and Oxford colleague who became a close friend of C.S. Lewis. Tolkien, a philologist and medievalist, taught at Oxford and shared Lewis’s enthusiasm for mythology, language, and older literature.
The two men were members of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group associated with Oxford. The group met regularly at venues including The Eagle and Child pub, known to members as the Bird and Baby, and in college rooms. Writers read works in progress and discussed literature, theology, and myth.
Lewis encouraged Tolkien’s work, and Tolkien’s developing mythology became the foundation for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien also played an important role in Lewis’s return to Christianity, although their religious and personal views were not identical.
Their friendship later became strained, particularly as Lewis’s public religious profile and personal relationships changed. Even so, Tolkien and Lewis remain strongly associated in literary history as major twentieth-century authors shaped by Oxford and the Inklings.