The Inklings, a literary club

• The years 1930-1949 for the Thursday readings.
• Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, Barfield, Warnie…
• The pub The Eagle and Child, 'Bird and Baby'.

A borrowed name

At the start, the Inklings are a students' club founded around 1931 by Edward Tangye Lean. When the club disappears, Lewis and Tolkien take up the name for their circle of friends. The pun pleased Tolkien: ink means 'ink', and an inkling means a vague idea, a presentiment.

Who belonged?

The core included C.S. Lewis, his brother Warren, J.R.R. Tolkien, the physician Robert 'Humphrey' Havard, Hugo Dyson, Owen Barfield, when he was in Oxford, and Charles Williams, who arrived from London in 1939 with his publishing house. To these were added Nevill Coghill, Lord David Cecil, Adam Fox, and later Christopher Tolkien and John Wain. No women, no rules, no minutes.

The rituals

• Thursday evenings, in Lewis's rooms at Magdalen College: a chapter or a poem is read aloud, and then criticised without mercy.
• Tuesdays at midday, at the pub The Eagle and Child, nicknamed 'the Bird and Baby', in a little room at the back.

Chapters of The Lord of the Rings, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Williams's novels and Warnie's war memoirs were heard there. Narnia, by contrast, was not read to the Inklings, or very little.

The end

The Thursday readings cease around 1949. The meetings at the pub continue into the 1960s, and then at the Lamb and Flag, across the road. The death of Charles Williams in 1945 left a great void.

See also

• J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis
• Biography of C.S. Lewis (2): from the Inklings to Narnia, 1932-1963
• Chronology of the life of C.S. Lewis
• A lion in the English meadow: Charles Williams, or the unseen guest at the Inklings' table
• The alter ego and the anti-self: Arthur Greeves and Owen Barfield, the two friendships that made Lewis