Who was C.S. Lewis's close friend and fellow Oxford writer who wrote The Hobbit?

C.S. Lewis's close friend and fellow Oxford writer who wrote The Hobbit was J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien was a philologist and professor who created Middle-earth, while Lewis created Narnia and wrote extensively about Christianity and literature.

The two men met at Oxford and became members of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that also included writers such as Charles Williams and Owen Barfield. The group met mainly at Oxford’s Eagle and Child pub and in rooms at Magdalen College.

Lewis supported Tolkien’s early work and read drafts of Tolkien’s fiction. Tolkien, in turn, influenced Lewis’s intellectual and literary development. Their friendship was important, though it later became less close than it had been during their earlier Oxford years.

The Hobbit was published in 1937. Tolkien’s later The Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia became two of the most influential twentieth-century fantasy series.