The Inklings was an informal literary

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 discussion group associated with the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

 in fiction, and encouraged the writing of fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

. Although Christian

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 values were notably present in several members' work, there were also irreligious members of the discussion group.

Members and meetings

The more regular members of the Inklings, many of them academics at the University, included J. R. R. "Tollers" Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

, C. S. "Jack" Lewis

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

, Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic.Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a 1st class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became the book Poetic...

, Charles Williams, Christopher Tolkien

Christopher Tolkien

Christopher Reuel Tolkien is the third and youngest son of the author J. R. R. Tolkien , and is best known as the editor of much of his father's posthumously published work. He drew the original maps for his father's The Lord of the Rings, which he signed C. J. R. T. The J...

 (J. R. R. Tolkien's son), Warren "Warnie" Lewis

Warren Lewis

Warren Hamilton Lewis was an Irish British Army officer and historian, best known as the brother of the author and professor C. S. Lewis. Warren Lewis was a supply officer with the Royal Army Service Corps of the British Army during and after World War I...

 (C. S. Lewis's elder brother), Roger Lancelyn Green, Adam Fox

Adam Fox

Adam Fox , Canon, was the Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was one of the first members of the "Inklings", a literary group which also included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Between 1938 and 1942 he was Professor of Poetry. Later he became Canon of Westminster Abbey and he is...

, Hugo Dyson

Hugo Dyson

Henry Victor Dyson Dyson , generally known as Hugo Dyson and who signed his writings H. V. D. Dyson, was an English academic and a member of the Inklings literary group. He was a committed Christian, and together with J.R.R. Tolkien, he helped persuade C.S...

, R. A. "Humphrey" Havard

Robert Havard

Dr. Robert Emlyn Havard was the physician of C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy Gresham.Lewis, and Havard joined the Oxford-based Inklings because of the literary interests he shared with that group. Like J.R.R. Tolkien, he was a Roman Catholic...

, J. A. W. Bennett

J. A. W. Bennett

Jack Arthur Walter Bennett was a New Zealand-born literary scholar. He was best known as a scholar of Middle English literature. He was editor of the journal Medium Aevum from 1956 to 1980, having earlier assisted his predecessor, C. T. Onions, and was a colleague of C. S. Lewis at Magdalen...

, Lord David Cecil

Lord David Cecil

Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil, CH , was a British biographer, historian and academic. He held the style of 'Lord' by courtesy, as a younger son of a marquess.-Early life and studies:...

, and Nevill Coghill

Nevill Coghill

Nevill Coghill was a British literary scholar, known especially for his modern English version of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.-Life:...

. Other less frequent attenders at their meetings included Percy Bates

Percy Bates

Sir Percy Elly Bates, 4th Baronet, GBE was an English shipowner.Bates was born in Wavertree, Liverpool, the second son of Sir Edward Percy Bates, 2nd Baronet. He was educated at Winchester College from 1892 to 1897 and was then apprenticed to William Johnston & Co, a Liverpool shipowners...

, Charles Leslie Wrenn

Charles Leslie Wrenn

Charles Leslie Wrenn was a British scholar. He became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford in 1945, the successor in the chair of J.R.R. Tolkien, and held the position until 1963. Wrenn was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He was also a member of the...

, Colin Hardie, James Dundas-Grant, John David Arnett, Jon Fromke John Wain

John Wain

John Barrington Wain was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated with the literary group "The Movement". For most of his life, Wain worked as a freelance journalist and author, writing and reviewing for newspapers and the radio. He seems to have married in 1947, since C. S...

, R. B. McCallum

R. B. McCallum

R. B. McCallum was a British historian. He was a fellow of Pembroke College,Oxford, where he taught Modern History and Politics. and was member of Tolkien's Inklings....

, Gervase Mathew, and C. E. Stevens. Guests included author E. R. Eddison

Eric Rucker Eddison

Eric Rücker Eddison was an English civil servant and author, writing under the name "E.R. Eddison."-Biography:...

 and South African poet Roy Campbell

Roy Campbell (poet)

Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell, was an Anglo-African poet and satirist. He was considered by T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Edith Sitwell to have been one of the best poets of the period between the First and Second World Wars...

.

"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." As was typical for university literary groups in their time and place, the Inklings were all male. (Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...

, sometimes claimed as an Inkling, was a friend of Lewis and Williams, but never attended Inklings meetings.)

Readings and discussions of the members' unfinished works were the principal purposes of meetings. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...

, Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet

Out of the Silent Planet

Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel of a science fiction trilogy written by C. S. Lewis, sometimes referred to as the Space Trilogy, Ransom Trilogy or Cosmic Trilogy. The other volumes are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, and a fragment of a sequel was published posthumously as The...

, and Williams's All Hallows' Eve were among the novels first read to the Inklings. Tolkien's fictional Notion Club

The Notion Club Papers

The Notion Club Papers is the title of an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written during 1945 and published posthumously in Sauron Defeated, the 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth. It is a space/time/dream travel story, written at the same time as The Lord of the Rings was being developed...

 (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 famously bad prose of Amanda McKittrick Ros for the longest without laughing.

The name was associated originally with a society of Oxford University's University College

University College, Oxford

.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...

, initiated by the then undergraduate Edward Tangye Lean

Edward Tangye Lean

Edward Tangye Lean was a British author and original founder of the Inklings literary club in Oxford.Lean's father was Francis William le Blount Lean and his mother was Helena Annie Lean, who were married in 1904, separated by 1927, and were both Quakers...

 circa 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

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 during 1933, the society ended, and its name was transferred by Tolkien and Lewis 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."

Until late 1949, Inklings readings and discussions usually occurred during Thursday evenings in C. S. Lewis's college rooms at Magdalen College

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

. The Inklings and friends were also known to gather informally on Tuesdays at midday at a local public house

Public house

A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

, The Eagle and Child

The Eagle and Child

The Eagle and Child is a pub in St Giles', Oxford, England which is owned by St. John's College, Oxford. The pub had been part of an endowment belonging to University College since the 17th century. It has associations with the Inklings writers' group which included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S...

, familiarly and alliteratively known in the Oxford community as The Bird and Baby, or simply The Bird. Later pub meetings were at The Lamb and Flag across the street, and in earlier years the Inklings also met irregularly in yet other pubs, but The Eagle and Child is the best known.

Legacy

The Marion E. Wade Center, located at Wheaton College, Illinois is devoted to the work of seven British authors including four Inklings and Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...

. Overall, the Wade Center has more than 11,000 volumes including first editions and critical works. Other holdings on the seven foremost authors (G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....

, George MacDonald

George MacDonald

George MacDonald was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister.Known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy novels, George MacDonald inspired many authors, such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. It was C.S...

, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Inklings Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield

Owen Barfield was a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic.Barfield was born in London. He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a 1st class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became the book Poetic...

, C. S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...

, J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...

, and Charles Williams

Charles Williams (UK writer)

Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings.- Biography :...

) include letters, manuscripts, audio and video tapes, artwork, dissertations, periodicals, photographs, and related materials.

The Mythopoeic Society

Mythopoeic Society

The Mythopoeic Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of mythopoeia, fantasy and mythic literature. The group focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on works written by J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and C. S. Lewis. These authors were members of The Inklings, an...

 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 in 1967 and incorporated as a non-profit organization

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 in 1971.

A resurrection of the Inklings in Oxford was made in 2006; the group still meets every Sunday evening, currently at St Cross College nearby the Eagle and Child. It has similar aims and methods to the original group, albeit with somewhat gentler criticism.

Named after the Inklings is The Inklings Society based in Aachen

Aachen

Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...

, and their yearbook, Inklings Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik, published from 1983 by Brendow, Moers

Moers

Moers is a German city on the left bank of the Rhine. Moers belongs to the district of Wesel...

. The yearbook contains scholarly articles and reviews, dealing with Inklings members in particular, but also with fantasy literature and mythopoeia in general.

The members of the Inklings are the three Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica in James A. Owen's novel, Here, There Be Dragons.

Fictional transcripts of seven meetings of the Inklings are included in the novel "Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien".

The undergraduate literary and art magazine at Miami University

Miami University

Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...

 in Oxford, OH, is named Inklings. They also meet on Thursday nights.

Sources

• Hein, David, and Edward Henderson, eds. (2011). C. S. Lewis and Friends: Faith and the Power of Imagination. London: SPCK. Essays by Peter Schakel, Ralph Wood, Ann Loades, and other experts on CSL, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, Austin Farrer, and Rose Macaulay.

External links

• Journal of Inklings Studies, a peer-reviewed academic journal based in Oxford
• Further Up and Further In, a C. S. Lewis and Inklings Resource Blog
• An Inklings bibliography from The Mythopoeic Society
• German Inklings Society
• Marion E. Wade Center, a research collection
• Inklings, entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography