The Secret to Tolkien's Success
An intro to the Inklings...
How did four men change Western culture forever?
By meeting weekly at the pub.
The Inklings was an informal group of Oxford academics who met regularly to share and critique each other's unfinished writings. Over the course of twenty years, these meetings helped produce works like The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many more.
While the majority of the Inklings are unknown by most, they had an inordinate influence on the literary world, and even culture itself. Today, we look at the most popular members of the group — and where to start with their writing.
If we can take one lesson from the Inklings, it’s this: genius is forged in fellowship…
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J.R.R. Tolkien
It was only with the help of the Inklings that the legendary linguist, historian, and mythologist J.R.R. Tolkien completed his The Lord of the Rings, one of the most popular and influential books of all time.
Writing about how the Inklings, and specifically his friend C.S. Lewis, helped him complete it, Tolkien said himself: “Only by his support and friendship did I ever struggle to the end of the labour.”
Before The Lord of the Rings of course came Tolkien’s short novel The Hobbit, a great place to start if you’re looking for something more accessible. Few readers make it through Tolkien’s epic legendarium of Middle-Earth The Silmarillion, but his shorter works, including The Children of Hurin and Beren and Luthien, tell the tales of ancient Middle-Earth in more approachable narratives.
But for a bite-sized story that punches far above its weight, read Tolkien’s short allegory on the spiritual struggle of creativity, Leaf by Niggle. It can be read in one sitting, and is well worth the time you spend with it.
C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis was the Inkling whose authorship was most similar to Tolkien’s. His Chronicles of Narnia are a deceptively lightweight collection of tales that entertain while carrying the writer’s weighty theological purpose.
For those who grew up reading the Chronicles and are ready to grapple with the more mature struggles of faith, Lewis’s Till We Have Faces is a dark, fantastical, psychological novel that reaches deep into our mythic past to re-discover Christianity.
In it, he retells the archetypal love story of Cupid and Psyche — but with a new warning for modern times:
When you fail to recognize that your soul seeks transcendent love, not just physical or even emotional, you risk settling for unfitting substitutes…
Lewis’s nonfiction is also commendable, and works like Mere Christianity are short, powerful expositions of the faith that remain popular with apologists today.
His offbeat imagination also produced genre-defying works of religious fiction such as The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters — in the latter, a senior demon advises his nephew on the best way to tempt humans and lead them to hell. Strange yet insightful, Lewis’ shorter works articulate the Christian faith with unforgettable originality.
Owen Barfield
Known as “the first and last Inkling,” Barfield’s work remains less culturally popular than that of Tolkien and Lewis, yet his ideas and aesthetics impacted both writers profoundly.
Barfield’s own writing remains more obscure. It includes works on the evolution of consciousness, as well as Poetic Diction, an exploration of how beautiful language conveys meaning.
However, he also published the first fantasy novel of any Inkling.
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