Who was C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Oxford literary scholar?

J.R.R. Tolkien was C.S. Lewis’s close friend and fellow Oxford literary scholar.

Lewis and Tolkien met at Oxford and became members of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that met mainly at The Eagle and Child pub. Their friendship was grounded in shared interests in mythology, language, medieval literature, and Christian belief. Tolkien was already developing ideas that would become The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, while Lewis was writing criticism and imaginative fiction.

Tolkien helped Lewis reconsider Christianity, although Lewis’s conversion was also influenced by other friends and by his own reading. Lewis, in turn, strongly encouraged Tolkien’s writing. Their relationship was intellectually productive but not always free of disagreement, especially over literary taste and academic matters.

Charles Williams and Owen Barfield were also associated with the Inklings, so they are sometimes confused with Lewis’s best-known literary friend. Tolkien, however, is the canonical answer to this question.