Which writer became C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Oxford academic?

J.R.R. Tolkien became C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Oxford academic.

Lewis and Tolkien met at Oxford and developed a friendship rooted in shared interests in mythology, language, literature, and Christianity. Tolkien was a philologist and medievalist whose work on Germanic and medieval languages strongly influenced his own fiction.

Both men participated in the Inklings, an informal Oxford literary discussion group. Members read works in progress aloud and offered criticism. Meetings often took place at The Eagle and Child pub, known to members as the Bird and Baby, as well as in college rooms.

Their friendship was important to Lewis’s return to Christian belief, although Lewis’s conversion developed through several influences and cannot be reduced to Tolkien alone. The two writers later experienced some distance, especially after Lewis’s growing public fame, but their Oxford association remains one of the most famous literary friendships of the twentieth century.