J.R.R. Tolkien was C.S. Lewis’s fellow Inkling and the author of The Lord of the Rings.
Lewis and Tolkien met at Oxford in the 1920s and became close friends. Both were scholars of medieval and Old English literature, and both valued myth, language, and imaginative storytelling. Their conversations influenced each other’s work, although they developed very different fictional worlds.
The Inklings were an informal Oxford literary discussion group active mainly during the 1930s and 1940s. The group included Lewis, Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield among others. Members read drafts aloud and discussed literature, mythology, and Christian ideas.
Tolkien’s best-known Middle-earth works include The Hobbit, published in 1937, and The Lord of the Rings, published in three volumes from 1954 to 1955. Lewis’s Narnia books began appearing in 1950, making the two friends major twentieth-century fantasy authors.