Who was C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Inkling who wrote The Lord of the Rings?

C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Inkling who wrote The Lord of the Rings was J.R.R. Tolkien.

Lewis and Tolkien met at Oxford and became important members of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group. The group met mainly at Oxford’s Eagle and Child pub and in Lewis’s college rooms, where members read and criticized works in progress.

Tolkien’s developing mythology influenced Lewis, while Lewis encouraged Tolkien during the long creation of The Lord of the Rings. Their friendship also involved disagreement, especially over literary style and religion, but both writers valued rigorous criticism.

The two authors are often paired because each created an influential twentieth-century fantasy world. Tolkien wrote Middle-earth, while Lewis wrote Narnia; the settings, characters, and fictional histories are separate.