Last night I finished reading The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfiend, Charles Williams, by Philip Zaleski & Carol Zaleski. Copuyright (c) 2015 by Philip Zaleski & Carol Zaleski. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-53625-1.
The Inklings were a group of scholars, mainly from Oxford University. It began in 1931 with Edward Tangye, a student at Oxford. Clive Staples Lewis, John R. R. Tolkien, and a few others attended. Soon after Tangye graduated and left the university, Lewis and Tolkien resumed the meetings under the same name.
Lewis, Tolkien, and a few other friends began meeting in Lewis’s rooms at Oxford’s Magdalen College to critique one another’s unpublished manuscripts. Lewis’s brother Warren and Owen Barfield soon joined, as did the physician Dr. Robert Havard and Adam Fox.
Several years later, the Inklings began meeting on Tuesday noons at the Eagle and Child pub. Charles Williams added new flavor with his dramatic personality and creative energy. Part of the enduring strength of the Inklings was that they helped each other. They did not compete against one another. Honest disagreement and criticism were common. The members of the unofficial and informal group enjoyed a strong sense of unity. Their influence on each other was multi-level.
The Inklings never attempted to form a bureaucracy or organization. The members were scholars who wanted to write, and they remained true to their purpose. The topics of discussion at the meetings were wide and varied: academics, politics, religion, fantasy, history, and more.
They were personally involved in each other’s lives. They were not abstract or detached scholars who met only on an intellectual level. The Inklings were emotionally and socially involved with one another.
Though fantasy was important to them, history and mysticism were also discussed. Some approached Christianity mystically. Charles Williams wrote theology from a mystical perspective.
G. K. Chesterton was considered close to the Inklings, but his death in 1936 prevented his involvement. Chesterton was an important influence in early twentieth-century literature. He created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown and wrote works of apologetics such as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. C. S. Lewis considered Chesterton a major influence on his life and on his understanding of myth and reason.
Over the years, nearly twenty members came and went, plus several women associates such as Dorothy Sayers and Ruth Pitter. Dorothy Sayers was friends with C. S. Lewis, collaborated with Charles Williams, and influenced the Inklings through her Christian apologetics and her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Lewis admired Ruth Pitter, and they exchanged poems and critiqued each other’s work. She also associated with Owen Barfield. Ruth Pitter credited her conversion to Christianity to Lewis’s wartime BBC radio broadcasts and The Screwtape Letters.
The Inklings’ Thursday evening readings concluded in late 1949, but their Tuesday morning pub gatherings continued until C. S. Lewis’s death in November 1963. Spanning three decades, this influential literary circle profoundly shaped modern literature and Christian apologetics.