Inklings, The
Entry updated 7 November 2022. Tagged: Community.
Oxford University-based reading circle and discussion group, active from the early 1930s to 1949, which encouraged the writing of Fantasy. Its best known members are C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien and Charles Williams; others with entries in this encyclopedia are Owen Barfield and Roger Lancelyn Green. E R Eddison was twice a guest of the Inklings. Works in progress read to and discussed at Inklings gatherings included portions of Lewis's sf Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955 3vols) and Williams's All Hallows' Eve (1945). The continuing fame of Lewis and Tolkien and the durable cult-author status of Williams have generated a huge number of critical studies; the Mythopoeic Awards for fantasy include a nonfiction category devoted solely to Inklings scholarship.
A fictional continuation of the group in the early 1960s – Lewis and Tolkien are mentioned, but do not appear – is of seminal importance to Iain Pears's Arcadia (2015). [DRL]
see also: The Encyclopedia of Fantasy.
further reading
- Humphrey Carpenter. The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
- Candice Fredrick and Sam McBride. Women Among the Inklings: Gender, C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien, and Charles Williams (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998) [nonfiction: hb/nonpictorial]
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