Part II. The Inklings: Barfield, Tolkien, and Williams
The membership of the Oxford literary group that came to be known as the Inklings varied over the years of its existence, but always at its centre were C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Also important were Charles Williams, poet and author of philosophical novels still in print today, and Owen Barfield, whom Lewis called the ‘wisest and best’ of his ‘unofficial teachers’ in The Allegory of Love (1936), but who could not often attend meetings, since he worked in London as a solicitor. These chapters bring together Lewis's reviews of the works of his friends. Together they give some hint of what discussion, debate and critical argument must have been like, when one or other of the Inklings read parts of a work in progress on a Thursday evening in Lewis's rooms in Magdalen College. When Lewis published The Problem of Pain (1942), he dedicated the book to the Inklings.