J.R.R. Tolkien was C.S. Lewis’s fellow Oxford colleague and Inklings friend.
Tolkien was a philologist and the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Lewis and Tolkien met at Oxford and developed a friendship centered partly on literature, mythology, language, and Christian belief. Their conversations influenced their thinking about fantasy and storytelling.
Both men belonged to the Inklings, an informal Oxford literary discussion group that met mainly at The Eagle and Child pub and in college rooms. The group also included writers such as Charles Williams and Owen Barfield.
Lewis helped encourage Tolkien’s work, including early readings of parts of The Lord of the Rings. Their friendship later became more complicated, and they did not remain equally close throughout Lewis’s entire life, but their intellectual and literary association remains historically important.