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Imagine the scene. May 11th 1926. Oxford, England, the world renowned University city of ‘dreaming spires’. A balmy, spring day with the ancient college gardens and gentle Christ Church meadows of the river Cherwell in full bloom. An English faculty meeting at Merton College. The 34 year old professor of medieval language and literature, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and the 26 year old Fellow in English literature, Clive Staples Lewis, meet for the first time. Two of history’s most influential writers-to-be in the literary genre of fantasy – occupying the same time and place. Sounds like a meeting of ‘wizards’ from one of their seminal novels doesn’t it? Magic was certainly in the air.
Tolkien’s expertise in Anglo-Saxon literature and fluency in medieval languages were the learned foundations to his creative writing. His first novel, The Hobbit (1937), developed from the bedtime stories he invented for his children, led to the much longer and more ambitious The Lord of the Rings (3 vols., 1954-5) and the creation of the history and mythology of ‘Middle Earth’. Tolkien’s dread of the destruction of rural England struck a chord with readers concerned with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, propelling his imaginary world to cult status.
As with Tolkien, C. S. Lewis had discovered classical Norse and Celtic mythology and, together with his re-found Christianity, the ancient lore formed the essential ingredients to much of his creative writing. Nowadays, Lewis is most well known for his seven ‘Narnia’ stories for children – fantasy adventure with undertones of Christian parable; they began with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe(1950) and closed with The Last Battle(1956).
Together with a heady mix of other writers and academics, including Charles Williams, Lord David Cecil, Nevill Coghill (translator of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales)and Christopher Tolkien (J. R. R. Tolkien’s son and drawer of the maps of Middle Earth), Tolkien and Lewis formed ‘The Inklings’ – a group of literary experts and enthusiasts who met either in Lewis’s Magdalen College rooms, or the Oxford pub ‘The Eagle and Child’ (nicknamed ‘The Bird and Baby’). It was during a meeting of The Inklings where Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet first saw the light of day.
Although there were periods of rivalry between Tolkien and Lewis, for the most part they held each other in high regard. Tolkien said of Lewis “The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not influence but sheer encouragement […] He was for long my only audience.” Lewis said of The Fellowship of the Ring when it appeared in 1954, “This book is like lightning from a clear sky.”
Take yourself and your family on a quest through Country House Library’s wondrous world of vintage and new editions of Tolkien, Lewis and the wondrous literary land of The Inklings.
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