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Inklings

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This article is about a literary group. For the video game characters, see Inkling (Splatoon).

The New Building at Magdalen College. The Inklings met in C. S. Lewis's rooms, above the arcade on the right side of the central block.

The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949.[1] The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy. The best-known, apart from Tolkien and Lewis, were Charles Williams, and (although a Londoner) Owen Barfield.

Members

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The Eagle and Child pub (commonly known as the Bird and Baby or simply just the Bird) in Oxford where the Inklings met informally on Tuesday mornings during term.

The more regular members of the Inklings, many of them academics at the University, included:

Less frequent visitors included:

Guests included:

Meetings

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A corner of The Eagle and Child pub, formerly the landlord's sitting-room where Lewis's friends, including Inklings members, informally gathered on Tuesday mornings. There is a small display of memorabilia.

"Properly speaking," wrote Warren Lewis, "the Inklings was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections."[13] As was typical for university groups in their time and place, the Inklings were all male. Readings and discussions of the members' unfinished works were the principal purposes of meetings. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,[14] Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet, and Williams's All Hallows' Eve were among the novels first read to the Inklings. Tolkien's fictional Notion Club (see "Sauron Defeated") was based on the Inklings. Meetings were not all serious; the Inklings amused themselves by having competitions to see who could read the notoriously bad prose of Amanda McKittrick Ros for the longest without laughing.[15]

The name was associated originally with a society of Oxford University's University College, initiated by the then undergraduate Edward Tangye Lean around 1931, for the purpose of reading aloud unfinished compositions. The society consisted of students and dons, among them Tolkien and Lewis. When Lean left Oxford in 1933, the society ended, and Tolkien and Lewis transferred its name to their group at Magdalen College. On the association between the two 'Inklings' societies, Tolkien later said "although our habit was to read aloud compositions of various kinds (and lengths!), this association and its habit would in fact have come into being at that time, whether the original short-lived club had ever existed or not."[16]

Until late 1949, Inklings readings and discussions were usually held on Thursday evenings in C. S. Lewis's rooms at Magdalen. The Inklings and friends also gathered informally on Tuesdays at midday at a local public house, The Eagle and Child, familiarly and alliteratively known in the Oxford community as The Bird and Baby, or simply The Bird.[17] The publican, Charlie Blagrove, let Lewis and friends use his private parlour for privacy; the wall and door separating it from the public bar were removed in 1962.[18] During the war years, beer shortages occasionally rendered the Eagle and Child unable to open and the group instead met at other pubs, including the White Horse and the Kings Arms.[19]

Legacy

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The Marion E. Wade Center, at Wheaton College, Illinois, has holdings on the Inklings Owen Barfield, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. These include letters, manuscripts, audio and video tapes, artwork, dissertations, periodicals, photographs, and related materials.

The Mythopoeic Society, with its journal Mythlore, is a literary organization devoted to the study of mythopoeic literature, particularly the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams, founded by Glen GoodKnight in 1967 and incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1971.[20]

Another journal that focuses on The Inklings is Journal of Inklings Studies (founded in 2011).[21]

The Inklings in fiction

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Three of the best-known members of the Inklings – Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams – are the main characters of James A. Owen's fantasy series, The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, while Warren Lewis and Hugo Dyson are recurring minor characters throughout the series. The existence and founding of the organization are also alluded to in the third novel, The Indigo King.[22]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Kilby & Mead 1982, p. 230.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Glyer, Diana Pavlac (2019). "Surprised by friendship". Christian History (132). Retrieved 9 November 2024.
  3. ^ Carpenter 2023, Letter #71 to Christopher Tolkien, 25 May 1944.
  4. ^ Carpenter 2023, Letter #28 to Stanley Unwin, 4 June 1938.
  5. ^ a b no byline (1985). "The Inklings". Christian History (7).
  6. ^ Glyer 2007, p. 12.
  7. ^ Bailey, Cyril (2004). "Hardie, William Ross (1862–1916)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 9 November 2024.
  8. ^ Chadwick, Henry (May 1976). "Obituary: Gervase Mathew". New Blackfriars. 57 (672): 194–196. doi:10.1111/j.1741-2005 (inactive 1 July 2025). JSTOR 43246551.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
  9. ^ Plaskitt, Emma (2006). "Inklings (act. 1930–1960)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/92544. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  10. ^ Hollings, Christopher; McCartney, Mark, eds. (2023). Oxford's Sedleian Professors of Natural Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 188.
  11. ^ Carpenter 2023, Letter #83 to Christopher Tolkien, 6 October 1944.
  12. ^ Carpenter 2023, Letter #73 to Christopher Tolkien, 10 June 1944.
  13. ^ Edwards, Bruce L. (2007). CS Lewis: Apologist, philosopher, and theologian. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9780275991197.
  14. ^ "Inklings | literary group". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2 August 2017.
  15. ^ "War of Words over World's Worst Writer", Culture Northern Ireland, archived from the original on 12 March 2007.
  16. ^ Carpenter 2023, letter #298 to William Luther White, 11 September 1967.
  17. ^ "Eagle & Child pub". Headington. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016..
  18. ^ Carpenter 1979, p. 149.
  19. ^ King, D. W. (2020). "When did the Inklings meet? A chronological survey of their gatherings: 1933–1954". Journal of Inklings Studies. 10 (2): 184–204. doi:10.3366/ink.2020.0079. S2CID 226364975.
  20. ^ Nelson, Valerie J. (14 November 2010). "Glen Howard GoodKnight II dies at 69; Tolkien enthusiast founded the Mythopoeic Society". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  21. ^ Croft, Janet Brennan (2016). "Bibliographic Resources for Literature Searches on J.R.R Tolkien". Journal of Tolkien Research. 3 (1). Article 2.
  22. ^ "The Indigo King". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 12 November 2025.

Sources

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Further reading

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  • Duriez, Colin; Porter, David (2001). The Inklings Handbook: The Lives, Thought and Writings of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and their Friends. Azure. ISBN 1-902694-13-9.
  • Duriez, Colin (2003). Tolkien and CS Lewis: The Gift of Friendship. Paulist Press. ISBN 1-58768-026-2.
  • Glyer, Diana Pavlac (2015). Bandersnatch: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings. Kent State University Press. ISBN 9781606352762.
  • Karlson, Henry (2010). Thinking with the Inklings. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1-4505-4130-5.
  • Knight, Gareth (October 2010). The Magical World of the Inklings. Barfield, Owen (foreword) (new & expanded ed.). Skylight. ISBN 978-1-908011-01-5.
  • Segura, Eduardo; Honegger, Thomas, eds. (2007). Myth and Magic: Art According to the Inklings. Walking Tree Publishers. ISBN 978-3-905703-08-5.
  • Zaleski, Philip; Zaleski, Carol (2015). The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374154097.
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