What was C S Lewis’s and J R R Tolkien’s Oxford circle, The “Inklings,” really like? In the Tolkien issue of Christian History & Biography, my friends Jennifer Woodruff (now Jennifer Woodruff Tait) and Edwin Tait (now Edwin Woodruff Tait) contributed to a “group portrait” of the Inklings. Here, after a brief introduction from me, Jenn gives the texture of Oxford and the Inklings group, and Edwin highlights an oft-forgotten Inkling, Owen Barfield:
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Gallery – The Inklings
Tolkien relished his weekly meetings with this club of remarkable friends.
Thursday evenings in Lewis’s Magdalen College rooms and Tuesdays for lunch at the Eagle and Child public house, Tolkien joined C. S. Lewis and a revolving cast of others in a beloved ritual.
Over tea—or ale—and pipes, these Oxford thinkers and writers read aloud from their works, traded anecdotes and jibes, and engaged in what Lewis called “the cut and parry of prolonged, fierce, masculine argument.” Many passages of The Lord of the Rings found in the Inklings their first—and unfailingly appreciative—audience, much to the delight of their author. Continue reading
Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians
