J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis

• Met on May 11, 1926.
• Tolkien helps Lewis convert; Lewis pushes Tolkien to finish The Lord of the Rings.
• A friendship cooled but never broken.

In brief

Lewis and Tolkien met on May 11, 1926, at an Oxford English faculty meeting. Lewis wrote in his journal that this pale little man “hasn’t a bad side to him, but he needs a good swift kick in the pants.” They grew closer through the Coalbiters (Kolbítar), a club where Icelandic sagas were read in the original text.

Did you know

• Tolkien on Lewis: On the night of September 19, 1931, on Addison’s Walk, Tolkien convinced Lewis that myths can be true and that the Gospel is a “true myth.” Lewis then wrote his poem Mythopoeia, dedicated “from Philomythus to Misomythus.”
• Lewis on Tolkien: For nearly twenty years, Lewis was the first listener, and for a long time the only one, of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien said he owed it to Lewis for having finished the book, thanks to his encouragement. In 1961, Lewis even nominated Tolkien for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The story

Around 1936, the two friends realized there weren’t enough stories of their liking. They decided to write some: Lewis a voyage in space, Tolkien a voyage in time. Lewis kept his word with The Magician’s Nephew. Tolkien’s story, The Lost Road, remained unfinished.

Trivia

Tolkien disliked Narnia, finding it too rushed, too disparate, and too allegorical in his eyes. He was also hurt by Lewis’s friendship with Charles Williams, and later by his marriage to Joy Davidman. Their relationship cooled in the 1950s, but never broke.

In brief

At Lewis’s death, Tolkien wrote to his daughter that he felt this loss “as a blow to the roots.”

Going further

• The Inklings, a literary club
• Is Narnia an allegory?
• Myths and Narnia
• A lion in the English meadow: Charles Williams, or the invisible at the Inklings’ table
• A medievalist among the pulps: Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke and the space debate