Inklings

Inklings, informal group of writers that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and that met in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, in the 1930s and ’40s.

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As Lewis’s brother Warren (“Warnie”) put it, “There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections.” Lewis was the central figure, and others in it were mostly friends and university colleagues of his. Other members in addition to Lewis, Lewis’s brother, and Tolkien were Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Colin Hardie, Adam Fox, Hugo Dyson, Lord David Cecil, and Nevill Coghill. The group’s name was taken over from a student literary club at the University of Oxford when it ceased in 1933. But “pre-Inkling” meetings of Lewis with Barfield and Tolkien had started in the late 1920s, before the group adopted the name. Tolkien explained the name as a pun, meaning both “people with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas” and “those who dabble in ink”—thus doubly suitable for a group of writers discussing works-in-progress.

When the group was most active, the Inklings held meetings twice a week, with six to eight members typically attending. On Tuesday mornings they convened at the Eagle and Child pub (commonly known as the “Bird and Baby”) in Oxford for beer and wide-ranging conversation. But their most important meetings were Thursday evenings in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College, when various members read aloud from books or poems they were writing and other members responded with vigorous critiques and suggestions. Lewis read many of his works to the group, including The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, and Miracles. Tolkien (or his son Christopher) read chapters from The Lord of the Rings, and Williams read chapters from his novel All Hallow’s Eve and sections of his Arthurian poetry. As Warren Lewis recalled, “We were no mutual admiration society: praise for good work was unstinted, but censure for bad work—or even not-so-good work—was often brutally frank.”

The group contributed significantly to its members’ success through its criticism, support, and encouragement, an indebtedness evident in the acknowledgment pages and dedication pages of many of their works: Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, Williams’s The Forgiveness of Sins, and the first edition of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings were dedicated to the Inklings. Lewis wrote of the Inklings, “What I owe to them all is incalculable,” and Tolkien noted that “only by [Lewis’s] support and friendship did I ever struggle to the end” of The Lord of the Rings.

Attendance at Inklings meetings began to decline after 1945, and meetings came to an end in 1949. The last substantive reference to them was in Warren Lewis’s diary entry for October 20, 1949: “No one turned up after dinner, which was just as well, as [Lewis] has a bad cold and wanted to go to bed early.” Finally, in the entry for October 27, 1949: “No Inklings tonight, so dined at home.”