We have all let our imaginations wander into lands like Narnia or Middle Earth and came back out a different person. But none of these works of art happened by themselves. The writers of great literature put time and energy and thought into all the aspects of their writing. As a writer, I look at these great authors and wonder how they came across inspiration. The truth is, they did not find it alone. Even renowned writers had help with putting their ideas down on paper.
In the early 1930s, a group of writers formed a literary discussion group called Inklings. This group included authors and poets including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, Warren Lewis, and fourteen other writers. According to Warren Lewis, the group was “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.” The group met to read and discuss unfinished works of literature, hence the name “Inklings”. Tolkien described the name as “a pleasantly ingenious pun in its way, suggesting people with vague or half-informed intimations and ideas plus those who dabble in ink”.
The group was originally formed by a student named Edward Tangye Lean at University College, Oxford. When Lean graduated, Tolkien said the name “was then transferred … to the undetermined and unelected circle of friends who gathered about [Lewis] and met in his rooms at Magdalen”. The group met every Thursday in Lewis’s room at Magdelene College, and sometimes in Tolkien’s room at Merton. Here, they discussed manuscripts and poetry. They were also known to frequent a local pub named The Eagle and the Child, which the group affectionately referred to as “The Bird and the Baby” though this was considerably less formal than the sessions at the college.
The group was originally formed by a student named Edward Tangye Lean at University College, Oxford. When Lean graduated, Tolkien said the name “was then transferred … to the undetermined and unelected circle of friends who gathered about [Lewis] and met in his rooms at Magdalen”. The group met every Thursday in Lewis’s room at Magdelene College, and sometimes in Tolkien’s room at Merton. Here, they discussed manuscripts and poetry. They were also known to frequent a local pub named The Eagle and the Child, which the group affectionately referred to as “The Bird and the Baby” though this was considerably less formal than the sessions at the college.
These literary greats depended on the other members of Inklings to help them become who they are today. From discussions in this group sprouted J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce, and Charles Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve. If this group had not existed, we may never have been able to meet a talking beaver in Narnia or fight an orc in Middle Earth. The group influenced each other in such ways that Tolkien says this about Lewis: “Only from him did I ever get the idea that my 'stuff' could be more than a private hobby”.
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