Was Tolkien friends with C. S. Lewis?
Inklings
"Properly speaking," wrote Warren Lewis, "the Inklings was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections." As was typical for university literary groups in their time and place, the Inklings were all male. 
Readings and discussions of the members' unfinished works were the principal purposes of meetings. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet", and Williams's "All Hallows' Eve" were among the novels first read to the Inklings. Tolkien's fictional Notion Club (see "Sauron Defeated") was based on the Inklings. Meetings were not all serious; the Inklings amused themselves by having competitions to see who could read the notoriously bad prose of Amanda McKittrick Ros for the longest without laughing.
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien
Marxist criticism of Tolkien is divided. Some have vilified Tolkien for his social conservatism, and for the "veiled geopolitics" implied in readings that interpret Sauron's Mordor and Sharkey's dictatorship in the Shire as parodies of Soviet Communism (Oberhelman 2006).
E. P. Thompson in 1981 blames the cold warrior mentality on "too much early reading of The Lord of the Rings". Inglis (1983) modifies earlier accusations of fascism against Tolkien, but still maintains that the novel is a "political fantasy" for escapist middle-class readers in modern capitalist society. Griffin (1985) examines Tolkien in relation to Italian neofascism, again suggesting a proximity of Tolkien's ideals to those of the radical right. Other Marxist critics, however, have been more positive towards Tolkien. While criticizing Tolkien's politics embedded in The Lord of the Rings, China Miéville admires Tolkien's creative use of Norse mythology, tragedy, monsters, and subcreation, as well as his criticism of allegory.
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkien's letters published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection contains 354 letters, dating between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death.
Theophilus Johnson
Theophilus or Theo Johnson was born on 23 August 1836 at Tottenham in Middlesex, the third son of George Johnson, a well-to-do wax refiner from the City and his wife, Ann, daughter of John Josse of Spitalfields. He was the grand-uncle of Laurence Bertrand Johnson, the good friend of C. S. Lewis. Theo was apprenticed as a stationer and printer, eventually starting his own letterpress printing business.
William T. Kirkpatrick
William Thompson Kirkpatrick (10 January 1848 - 22 March 1921) was an Irish teacher and grammar school headmaster. He is best known for having been the tutor of the two Lewis brothers from Belfast, Warnie Lewis and C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis, who would later become well known as a literary critic, novelist, and Christian apologist, lived as a resident pupil with Kirkpatrick from 1914-1917. In his autobiography, Lewis reports that he was significantly influenced by his tutor.
Cecil Harwood
His friendship with Owen Barfield and C.S. Lewis has been well-recorded in the biographies written on these two personalities. It seems to have been a fruitful relationship throughout, influencing the work and thought of all three.
Francis Turner (RAF officer)
Turner returned to Magdalene, eventually becoming Pepys Librarian and President of the College. His contemporaries included Dennis Babbage and C. S. Lewis, and he became a close friend of T. S. Eliot.
J. R. R. Tolkien
In 1945, Tolkien moved to Merton College, Oxford, becoming the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, in which post he remained until his retirement in 1959. He served as an external examiner for University College, Dublin, for many years. In 1954 Tolkien received an honorary degree from the National University of Ireland (of which U.C.D. was a constituent college). Tolkien completed "The Lord of the Rings" in 1948, close to a decade after the first sketches.
Roy Campbell (poet)
Tolkien, who was then hard at work writing "The Lord of the Rings", was charmed by Campbell. In a letter to his son Christopher, Tolkien compared Campbell to Trotter, a torture-crippled hobbit character who appeared in an early draft of "The Lord of the Rings", to become the character of Aragorn in the final versions. Tolkien further commented, Here is a scion of an Ulster prot. family resident in S. Africa, most of whom fought in both wars, who became a Catholic after sheltering the Carmelite fathers in Barcelona — in vain, they were caught & butchered, and R.C. nearly lost his life. But he got the Carmelite archives from the burning library and took them through the Red country. [...] However it is not possible to convey an impression of such a rare character, both a soldier and a poet, and a Christian convert. How unlike the Left – the 'corduroy panzers' who fled to America [...]
The Screwtape Letters
The Screwtape Letters is a Christian apologetic novel by C. S. Lewis and dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien. It is written in a satirical, epistolary style and while it is fictional in format, the plot and characters are used to address Christian theological issues, primarily those to do with temptation and resistance to it.
Proverb
Probably the most famous user of proverbs in novels is J. R. R. Tolkien in his "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" series. Herman Melville is noted for creating proverbs in Moby Dick and in his poetry. Also, C. S. Lewis created a dozen proverbs in "The Horse and His Boy", and Mercedes Lackey created dozens for her invented Shin'a'in and Tale'edras cultures; Lackey's proverbs are notable in that they are reminiscent to those of Ancient Asia - e.g. "Just because you feel certain an enemy is lurking behind every bush, it doesn't follow that you are wrong" is like to "Before telling secrets on the road, look in the bushes." These authors are notable for not only using proverbs as integral to the development of the characters and the story line, but also for creating proverbs.
J. R. R. Tolkien
The Tolkiens had four children: John Francis Reuel Tolkien (17 November 1917 – 22 January 2003), Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien (22 October 1920 – 27 February 1984), Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (born 21 November 1924) and Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien (born 18 June 1929). Tolkien was very devoted to his children and sent them illustrated letters from Father Christmas when they were young. Each year more characters were added, such as the North Polar Bear (Father Christmas's helper), the Snow Man (his gardener), Ilbereth the elf (his secretary), and various other, minor characters. The major characters would relate tales of Father Christmas's battles against goblins who rode on bats and the various pranks committed by the North Polar Bear.
Tolkien family
Bratt first met Tolkien in 1908, when they lived in the same boarding house. Both were orphans. The two fell in love, despite Bratt being Tolkien's senior by three years. Before the end of 1909 the relationship became known to Tolkien's guardian, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, who forbade Tolkien to see Bratt until he was 21. With one exception, Tolkien obeyed this instruction to the letter while Father Morgan's guardianship lasted. They were married in 1916.
Paul H. Kocher
"J. R. R. Tolkien and George MacDonald." "Mythlore: A Journal of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and the Genres of Myth and Fantasy Studies" 8.3 (Autumn 1981): 3-4.
C. S. Lewis
Speculation regarding their relationship resurfaced with the 1990 publication of A. N. Wilson's biography of Lewis. Wilson (who never met Lewis) attempted to make a case for their having been lovers for a time. Wilson's biography was not the first to address the question of Lewis's relationship with Moore. George Sayer knew Lewis for 29 years, and he had sought to shed light on the relationship during the period of 14 years prior to Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In his biography "Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis", he wrote:
Later Sayer changed his mind. In the introduction to the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis he wrote:
Lewis spoke well of Mrs. Moore throughout his life, saying to his friend George Sayer, "She was generous and taught me to be generous, too." In December 1917, Lewis wrote in a letter to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves that Jane and Greeves were "the two people who matter most to me in the world".
Tolkien family
Simon Tolkien notably disagreed with the policy of his grandfather's estate in regard to "The Lord of the Rings" films. When Christopher Tolkien issued a statement that the "Tolkien estate would be best advised to avoid any specific association with the films", Simon Tolkien broke ranks, offering to cooperate with the filmmakers, stating "It was my view that we take a much more positive line on the film and that was overruled by my father." Following up a 2001 interview with the "Independent", Simon in 2003 gave interviews to the "Daily Telegraph" and other media in which he discussed his strained relationship with his father, describing it as a permanent breach. However, they have since reconciled.
Tolkien family
The Tolkien family is an English family of German origin whose best-known member is J. R. R. Tolkien, Oxford academic and author of the fantasy books "The Hobbit", "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion".
Arthur C. Clarke
During this time, Clarke corresponded with C. S. Lewis in the 1940s and 1950s and they once met in an Oxford pub, The Eastgate, to discuss science fiction and space travel. Clarke voiced great praise for Lewis upon his death, saying that the Ransom trilogy was one of the few works of science fiction that should be considered literature.
Charles Leslie Wrenn
Charles Leslie Wrenn (1895–1969) was a British scholar. He became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford in 1945, the successor in the chair of J.R.R. Tolkien, and held the position until 1963. Wrenn was a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He was also a member of the Oxford literary discussion group known as the "Inklings", which included C. S. Lewis and Tolkien. Some of the work published by Wrenn includes "The English Language" (1949), "A Study of Old English Literature" (1967)"," and "An Old English Grammar," written with Randolph Quirk (1955, rev. 1957). His literary interests were primarily comparative literature and later poets including T. S. Elliot.
The House of the Wolfings
"The House of the Wolfings" was one of the influences on J. R. R. Tolkien's popular "The Lord of the Rings". In a December 31, 1960 letter published in "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien", (p. 303), Tolkien wrote: 'The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in "The House of the Wolfings" or "The Roots of the Mountains"." Among the numerous parallels with "The Lord of the Rings", Morris has Old English-style placenames such as Mirkwood (p. 2) and the Mark (title page), Germanic personal names such as Thiodolf (p. 8), and dwarves as skilled smiths ("How the Dwarf-wrought Hauberk was Brought away from the Hall of the Daylings", p. 97).
Owen Barfield
Barfield and C. S. Lewis met in 1919 as students at Oxford University and were close friends for 44 years. "It is no exaggeration to say that his friendship with Barfield was one of the most important in his [Lewis's] life…” The relationship was reciprocated. Almost a year after Lewis's death, Barfield spoke of his friendship in a talk in the USA: "Now, whatever he was, and as you know, he was a great many things, CS Lewis was for me, first and foremost, the absolutely unforgettable friend, the friend with whom I was in close touch for over 40 years, the friend you might come to regard hardly as another human being, but almost as a part of the furniture of my existence.” When they met, Lewis was an atheist who told Barfield, "I don’t accept God!" Barfield was influential in converting Lewis. Lewis developed the concept of two kinds of friends, a first friend with whom you feel at home and agree and a second friend who brings to you a different point of view. He found Barfield's contribution in this way particularly helpful despite, or because of, the fact that “during the 1920s, the two were to engage in a long dispute over Barfield's (and their mutual friend, A.C. Harwood's) connection to anthroposophy and the kind of knowledge that imagination can give us… which they affectionately called 'The Great War'. Through their conversations, Lewis gave up materialist realism – the idea that our sensible world is self-explanatory and is all that there is – and moved closer to what he had always disparagingly referred to as “supernaturalism.” These conversations influenced Lewis towards writing his Narnia series. As well as being friend and teacher to Lewis, Barfield was (professionally) his legal adviser and trustee.
J. R. R. Tolkien
Tolkien's devout Roman Catholic faith was a significant factor in the conversion of C. S. Lewis from atheism to Christianity, although Tolkien was dismayed that Lewis chose to join the Church of England.
Tolkien family
Edith Mary Tolkien, born Bratt (21 January 1889 – 29 November 1971) was the wife of J. R. R. Tolkien. She served as the inspiration for his fictional character Lúthien Tinúviel, an Elven princess and the most beautiful of all the Children of Ilúvatar (the name of God in Tolkien's fiction).
Mythopoeic Society
The Mythopoeic Society (MythSoc) is a non-profit organization devoted to the study of mythopoeic literature, particularly the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and C. S. Lewis, all members of The Inklings, an informal group of writers who met weekly in C.S. Lewis’ rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford, from the early 1930s through late 1949.
J. R. R. Tolkien
In a 1951 letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien wrote about his intentions to create a "body of more or less connected legend", of which "[t]he cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama". The hands and minds of many artists have indeed been inspired by Tolkien's legends. Personally known to him were Pauline Baynes (Tolkien's favourite illustrator of "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" and "Farmer Giles of Ham") and Donald Swann (who set the music to "The Road Goes Ever On"). Queen Margrethe II of Denmark created illustrations to "The Lord of the Rings" in the early 1970s. She sent them to Tolkien, who was struck by the similarity they bore in style to his own drawings.
Philology
In the "Space Trilogy" by C.S. Lewis, the main character, Elwin Ransom, is a philologist - as was Lewis' close friend J. R. R. Tolkien.
British literature
A major work of science fiction, from the early 20th century, is "A Voyage to Arcturus" by Scottish writer David Lindsay, first published in 1920, and was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's "Space Trilogy".
From the early 1930s to late 1940s, an informal literary discussion group associated with the English faculty at the University of Oxford were "The Inklings". Its leading members were the major fantasy novelists; J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Lewis is known for "The Screwtape Letters" (1942), "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Space Trilogy", while Tolkien is best known as the author of "The Hobbit" (1937), "The Lord of the Rings", and "The Silmarillion".
Cyril Beeson
Beeson attended City of Oxford High School for Boys, where his best friend was T. E. Lawrence (better remembered today as Lawrence of Arabia). Lawrence called him by his nickname of "Scroggs".
C. S. Lewis
As a teenager, Lewis was wonder-struck by the songs and legends of what he called "Northernness", the ancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in the Icelandic sagas. These legends intensified an inner longing that he would later call "joy". He also grew to love nature; its beauty reminded him of the stories of the North, and the stories of the North reminded him of the beauties of nature. His teenage writings moved away from the tales of Boxen, and he began using different art forms, such as epic poetry and opera, to try to capture his new-found interest in Norse mythology and the natural world. Studying with Kirkpatrick ("The Great Knock", as Lewis afterwards called him) instilled in him a love of Greek literature and mythology and sharpened his debate and reasoning skills. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford. Within months of entering Oxford, the British Army shipped him to France to fight in the First World War. In one of his letters, Lewis cited that his experience of the horror of war, along with the loss of his mother and his unhappiness in school, were the bases of his pessimism and atheism.
Charles Williams (British writer)
Although Williams attracted the attention and admiration of some of the most notable writers of his day, including T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, his greatest admirer was probably C. S. Lewis, whose novel "That Hideous Strength" (1945) has been regarded as partially inspired by his acquaintance with both the man and his novels and poems. Williams came to know Lewis after reading Lewis's then-recently published study "The Allegory of Love"; he was so impressed he jotted down a letter of congratulation and dropped it in the mail. Coincidentally, Lewis had just finished reading Williams's novel "The Place of the Lion" and had written a similar note of congratulation. The letters crossed in the mail and led to an enduring and fruitful friendship.
On Fairy-Stories
Tolkien was among the pioneers of the genre that we would now call fantasy writing. In particular, his stories—together with those of C. S. Lewis—were among the first to establish the convention of an alternative world or universe as the setting for speculative fiction. Most earlier works with styles similar to Tolkien's, such as the science fiction of H. G. Wells or the Gothic romances of Mary Shelley, were set in a world that is recognisably that of the author and introduced only a single fantastic element—or at most a fantastic milieu within the author's world, as with Lovecraft or Howard. Tolkien departed from this; his work was nominally part of the history of our own world, but did not have the close linkage to history or contemporary times that his precursors had.
Tolkien family
Simon Mario Reuel Tolkien (born 1959) is a British barrister and novelist. He is the grandson of J. R. R. Tolkien. He is the only son of Christopher Tolkien and his first wife, Faith Faulconbridge. Simon Tolkien was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and then Downside School. He studied modern history at Trinity College, Oxford. In 1984, he married Tracey Steinberg who was born in 1962. They have two children, a son, Nicholas, and a daughter, Anna. Tracey Tolkien owned and operated a vintage clothing store in Chelsea, London, "Steinberg & Tolkien" which shut in September 2007. She has also published several books on vintage clothing and jewellery. Simon became a barrister in 1994, specializing in criminal defence and prosecution. Their son Nicholas is a playwright and director who debuted with his first play "Terezin", in June 2017.
C. S. Lewis
Lewis's interest in the works of George MacDonald was part of what turned him from atheism. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in Lewis's "The Great Divorce", chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical main character meets MacDonald in Heaven:
He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and Christian friend J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he seems to have met for the first time on 11 May 1926, and the book "The Everlasting Man" by G. K. Chesterton. Lewis vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape". He described his last struggle in "Surprised by Joy":
Lúthien
Lúthien Tinúviel (Y.T. 1200–Y.S. 503; died aged 3377) is a fictional character in the fantasy-world Middle-earth of the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. She is an elf, daughter of Thingol and Melian. She appears in "The Silmarillion", the epic poem "The Lay of Leithian", the Grey Annals section of "The War of the Jewels", and in other texts in Tolkien's legendarium. Her story is told to Frodo by Aragorn in "The Lord of the Rings".
Tolkien fandom
Isaac Asimov, who had read "The Lord of the Rings" three times by Tolkien's death in September 1973, wrote a Black Widowers short story as tribute to the fellow author. "Nothing Like Murder" (1974) mentions college students forming Tolkien societies at Columbia and elsewhere. Tolkien's son Christopher began the publication of posthumous material, beginning with the "Silmarillion" (1977) which was being prepared for publication by Tolkien but left unfinished at his death, followed by "The History of Middle-earth" series (1983 to 1996). "" (1977) and "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien" (1981) provided biographical information. These publications provided the raw material for in-depth Tolkien research, pioneered by Tom Shippey's, "The Road to Middle-earth" (1982).
Niekas
Meskys later wrote, "I started a separate mailing-comments zine for the APA, and changed its name to "Niekas" and started the numbering over again with the June 1962 issue... Since there was no Tolkien fanzine being published I decided to devote "Niekas" to Tolkien and try to run at least one Tolkien related piece in each issue." The fanzine played a prominent role in the early development of Tolkien fandom in the United States. Issue #7 included a letter from C. S. Lewis to Meskys that mentions "The Lord of the Rings".
C. S. Lewis
Many books have been inspired by Lewis, including "A Severe Mercy" by his correspondent and friend Sheldon Vanauken. "The Chronicles of Narnia" has been particularly influential. Modern children's literature has been more or less influenced by Lewis's series, such as Daniel Handler's "A Series of Unfortunate Events", Eoin Colfer's "Artemis Fowl", Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials", and J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" . Pullman is an atheist and so fierce a critic of Lewis's work as to be dubbed "the anti-Lewis". He considers C. S. Lewis a negative influence and has accused Lewis of featuring religious propaganda, misogyny, racism, and emotional sadism in his books. Authors of adult fantasy literature such as Tim Powers have also testified to being influenced by Lewis's work.
Puzzlewood
J. R. R. Tolkien was a frequent visitor to the Forest of Dean. Puzzlewood was the inspiration for the forests of Middle-earth in "The Lord of the Rings", such as the Old Forest, Mirkwood, Fangorn or Lothlórien. Tolkien may also have been inspired by the less well known scowles on the grounds of Lydney Park. When "The Lord of the Rings" was named Britain's favourite book in the "Big Read", Puzzlewood was used by Ray Mears to champion Tolkien's work.
Boxen (C. S. Lewis)
Boxen is a fictional world that C. S. Lewis ("Jack") and his brother W. H. Lewis ("Warren") created as children. The world of Boxen was created when Jack's stories about Animal-Land and Warnie's stories about India were brought together. In "Surprised by Joy", Jack explains that the union of Animal-Land and India took place "sometime in the late eighteenth century (their eighteenth century, not ours)".
J. R. R. Tolkien
At the age of 16, Tolkien met Edith Mary Bratt, who was three years his senior, when he and his brother Hilary moved into the boarding house where she lived in Duchess Road, Edgbaston. According to Humphrey Carpenter,
His guardian, Father Morgan, viewed Edith as the reason for Tolkien's having "muffed" his exams and considered it "altogether unfortunate" that his surrogate son was romantically involved with an older, Protestant woman. He prohibited him from meeting, talking to, or even corresponding with her until he was 21. He obeyed this prohibition to the letter, with one notable early exception, over which Father Morgan threatened to cut short his university career if he did not stop.
Of Other Worlds
Of Other Worlds is a 1966 anthology of literary criticism by C. S. Lewis and published posthumously by the executors of his estate. It was edited by Lewis' secretary and eventual literary executor Walter Hooper. The first part of the anthology consists of several essays that cover Lewis' ideas about the creation of science fiction or fantasy literature. "Unreal Estates" is the transcript of a recorded conversation between Lewis and the authors Brian Aldiss and Kingsley Amis that took place in Lewis' rooms in Magdalene College "a short while before illness forced him to retire." The second part of the book is made up of three of Lewis' science fiction stories (one of which was previously unpublished) and the beginnings of "After Ten Years", an unfinished novel set during the aftermath of the Trojan War.
Robert Havard
Dr. Robert Emlyn Havard (1901–1985) was the physician of C.S. Lewis, his wife Joy Gresham and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Havard was a "skilled and prolific writer".
Joy Davidman
Davidman had become interested in C. S. Lewis while still in America. She first met him in August 1952, when she made a trip to the United Kingdom, after a two-year correspondence with him. She planned to finish her book on the Ten Commandments that she had been working on, and which showed influences of Lewis's style of apologetics. After several lunch meetings and walks accompanying Davidman and his brother, Warren Lewis wrote in his diary that "a rapid friendship" had developed between his younger brother and Davidman, whom he described as "a Christian convert of Jewish race, medium height, good figure, horn rimmed specs, quite extraordinarily uninhibited." She spent Christmas and a fortnight at The Kilns with the brothers. Though Davidman was deeply in love with Lewis there was no reciprocation on his side.
Edith Tolkien
Edith Mary Tolkien (21 January 1889 – 29 November 1971; "née" Bratt) was the wife and muse of novelist J. R. R. Tolkien, and the inspiration for his fictional characters Lúthien Tinúviel and Arwen Evenstar.
Edith Tolkien
In a 1992 lecture, George Sayer recalled his friendship with the Tolkiens during the 1950s and '60s, "If I was there in the right time in the afternoon he would take me to have tea in the drawing room of the floor below, Edith Tolkien's room. The atmosphere was quite different, with hardly any papers and few books. She did most of the talking and it was not at all literary. Frequent subjects were the doings of the children, especially Christopher, the grandchildren, the garden in which I think Ronald enjoyed working, the iniquities of the Labour Party, the rising price of food, the changes for the worse in the Oxford shops and the difficulty in buying certain groceries. The road had deteriorated since they moved there. It used to be a quiet cul-de-sac. Now the lower end had been opened up and lorries and cars rushed through on their way to a building site or to the Oxford United's football ground. There were some very noisy people on the road. They even had as near neighbors an aspiring pop group. Ronald... told me that when she was younger Edith had been a fine pianist. Some of the conversation was about music. On one occasion she played to us on a very simple old-fashioned gramophone a record she had just bought. Her husband was relaxed and happy with this domesticity. Anyway, it was an important part of his life. Without a liking for the homely and domestic, he could not have written "The Hobbit", or created Frodo and Sam Gamgee, characters that sustain quite convincingly the story of "The Lord of the Rings", and link the high romance to the everyday and the ordinary."
Themes of The Lord of the Rings
Since the publications of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", "The Hobbit" and "The Silmarillion", a wealth of secondary literature has been published discussing the literary themes and archetypes present in the stories. Tolkien also wrote about the themes of his books in letters to friends, family and fans, and often within the books themselves. In his Foreword to the Second Edition of "The Lord of the Rings", Tolkien said that he "disliked allegory in all its forms" (using the word "applicability" instead), and told those claiming the story was a metaphor for World War II to remember that he had lost "all but one" of his close friends in World War I.
An Experiment with Time
The ideas of Dunne also strongly influenced the unfinished novels "The Notion Club Papers" by J. R. R. Tolkien and "The Dark Tower" by C. S. Lewis. Both writers were members of the Inklings literary circle, and Tolkien also used Dunne's ideas about parallel time dimensions in developing the relationship between time in Middle Earth and "Lórien time".
Mount Doom
Reviewer Bart Higgins noted the similarity between Tolkien's Mount Doom and the volcanic caverns under Venus depicted in "Perelandra" by Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis. "In both cases, the book reaches a cataclysmic scene of a struggle in an underground cavern, ending with an evil being falling into volcanic fire and being consumed. Since it is well known that Tolkien and Lewis frequently shared with each other their respective works in progress, it is reasonable to assume that the resemblance is no coincidence".
J. R. R. Tolkien
As well as his fiction, Tolkien was also a leading author of academic literary criticism. His seminal 1936 lecture, later published as an article, revolutionized the treatment of the Anglo-Saxon epic "Beowulf" by literary critics. The essay remains highly influential in the study of Old English literature to this day. "Beowulf" is one of the most significant influences upon Tolkien's later fiction, with major details of both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" being adapted from the poem. The piece reveals many of the aspects of "Beowulf" which Tolkien found most inspiring, most prominently the role of monsters in literature, particularly that of the dragon which appears in the final third of the poem:
Warwick
J. R. R. Tolkien seems to have been very influenced by Warwick (where he was married in the Catholic Church of Saint Mary Immaculate) and by its Mercian connections: Lynn Forest-Hill, in an article in the "Times Literary Supplement" (TLS 8 July 2005 pp 12–13) argues cogently that two important settlements in Tolkien's work were modelled on Warwick — Edoras closely on the early town, and Minas Tirith more remotely on the Norman; and that aspects of the plot of "The Lord of the Rings" are paralleled in the romance known as Guy of Warwick. Christopher Tolkien, in "The Book of Lost Tales", stated that Kortirion, the main city of Tol Eressëa, "would become in after days Warwick."
J. R. R. Tolkien
Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology. He specialized in English philology at university and in 1915 graduated with Old Norse as his special subject. He worked for the Oxford English Dictionary from 1918 and is credited with having worked on a number of words starting with the letter W, including walrus, over which he struggled mightily. In 1920, he became Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of linguistics from five to twenty. He gave courses in Old English heroic verse, history of English, various Old English and Middle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory Germanic philology, Gothic, Old Icelandic, and Medieval Welsh. When in 1925, aged thirty-three, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, he boasted that his students of Germanic philology in Leeds had even formed a "Viking Club". He also had a certain, if imperfect, knowledge of Finnish.
J. R. R. Tolkien
In a 1941 letter to his son Michael, Tolkien recalled:
On the evening of his 21st birthday, Tolkien wrote to Edith, who was living with family friend C. H. Jessop at Cheltenham. He declared that he had never ceased to love her, and asked her to marry him. Edith replied that she had already accepted the proposal of George Field, the brother of one of her closest schoolfriends. But Edith said she had agreed to marry Field only because she felt "on the shelf" and had begun to doubt that Tolkien still cared for her. She explained that, because of Tolkien's letter, everything had changed.
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien
The Magyar Tolkien Társaság ("Hungarian Tolkien Society") is a registered public benefit organization whose declared aim is to enhance public knowledge on the works and mythology created by J. R. R. Tolkien. Apart from organizing the Hungarian Tolkien aficionados into a community (choir, charity ball, creative workshops), the association has grown multifaceted since its foundation in 2002, it provides professional and technical editorial support for new publications, publishes the semiannual magazine "Lassi Laurië" featuring scholarly articles, interviews and various literary works and organizes numerous conferences, meetings and summer camps. In 2002, for its tenth anniversary, the society organized a joint conference with the Institute of English Studies of Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary entitled "J. R. R. Tolkien: Fantasy and Ethics" and published a book of studies containing the papers presented. The Magyar Tolkien Társaság also maintains relations with other tertiary institutions such as the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of Eötvös Loránd University, together with whom it regularly launches courses on Tolkienian subjects (""J. R. R. Tolkien - A 20th Century Mythology"")
A Voyage to Arcturus
The novel was a central influence on C. S. Lewis's 1938–1945 "Space Trilogy". Lewis also mentioned the "sorbing" (aggressive absorption of another's personality into one's own, fatal to the other person) as an influence on his 1942 book "The Screwtape Letters". Lewis in turn recommended the book to J. R. R. Tolkien, who said he read it "with avidity".
Tony Marchington
While at Oxford, Marchington befriended and later lodged with American Walter Hooper, the last personal secretary of the writer C.S. Lewis. Through this relationship, Marchington: shared a lectern with Hooper in 1975 in North Carolina; co-wrote the script of "Through Joy and Beyond," the 1977 documentary life of Lewis; and created the Lewis bonfire hoax letter, sent to Christianity and Literature in 1978.
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien
Not all original reviews, however, were so kind. "New York Times" reviewer Judith Shulevitz criticized the "pedantry" of Tolkien's literary style, saying that he "formulated a high-minded belief in the importance of his mission as a literary preservationist, which turns out to be death to literature itself." Critic Richard Jenkyns, writing in "The New Republic", criticized a perceived lack of psychological depth. Both the characters and the work itself are, according to Jenkyns, "anemic, and lacking in fiber." Even within Tolkien's literary group, The Inklings, reviews were mixed. Hugo Dyson complained loudly at its readings, and Christopher Tolkien records Dyson as "lying on the couch, and lolling and shouting and saying, 'Oh God, no more Elves.'" However, another Inkling, C. S. Lewis, had very different feelings, writing, "here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron." Despite these reviews and its lack of paperback printing until the 1960s, "The Lord of the Rings" initially sold well in hardback.
J. R. R. Tolkien
During his life in retirement, from 1959 up to his death in 1973, Tolkien received steadily increasing public attention and literary fame. In 1961, his friend C. S. Lewis even nominated him for the Nobel Prize in Literature. The sales of his books were so profitable that he regretted that he had not chosen early retirement. At first, he wrote enthusiastic answers to readers' enquiries, but he became increasingly unhappy about the sudden popularity of his books with the 1960s counter-culture movement. In a 1972 letter, he deplored having become a cult-figure, but admitted that "even the nose of a very modest idol ... cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense!"
Abbreviation
During the growth of philological linguistic theory in academic Britain, abbreviating became very fashionable. The use of abbreviation for the names of J. R. R. Tolkien and his friend C. S. Lewis, and other members of the Oxford literary group known as the Inklings, are sometimes cited as symptomatic of this. Likewise, a century earlier in Boston, a fad of abbreviation started that swept the United States, with the globally popular term OK generally credited as a remnant of its influence.
Pembroke College, Oxford
J. R. R. Tolkien was a Fellow of Pembroke from 1925 to 1945, and wrote "The Hobbit" and the first two volumes of "The Lord of the Rings" during his time there. Since 2013 the college has held an annual lecture on fantasy literature in his honour. Robin G. Collingwood, historian, philosopher, and author of "The Idea of History", was a fellow of the college between the Great War and the Second World War.
Simon Tolkien
Simon Tolkien notably disagreed with the policy of his grandfather's estate in regard to "The Lord of the Rings" films. When Christopher Tolkien issued a statement that the "Tolkien estate would be best advised to avoid any specific association with the films", Simon Tolkien broke ranks, offering to cooperate with the filmmakers, stating "It was my view that we take a much more positive line on the film and that was overruled by my father." Following up a 2001 interview with the "Independent", Simon in 2003 gave interviews to the "Daily Telegraph" and other media in which he discussed his strained relationship with his father, describing it as a permanent breach. However, they have since reconciled.
Sandfield Road
Sandfield Road's most famous resident was the author and academic J. R. R. Tolkien, another member of the Inklings, who lived at No 76 with his wife Edith from 1953 to 1968, towards the end of his time in Oxford. There is an inscription above the garage. When living here, Tolkien attended the Catholic Church of St Anthony of Padua in nearby Headley Way. Tolkien previously lived in Northmoor Road, North Oxford, and Holywell Street, in central Oxford.
The following volumes of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" novel were first published while he lived in this house:Tolkien attended the Church of St Anthony of Padua nearby (opened in 1960) when he was a resident in Sandfield Road. In due course, Tolkien's private address at Sandfield Road received some publicity and his telephone number was in the Oxford telephone directory.
In 1968, partly due to harassment by fans at his home in Sandfield Road, Tolkien moved to Bournemouth on the south coast of England.
Malvern Hills
J.R.R. Tolkien found inspiration in the Malvern landscape which he had viewed from his childhood home in Birmingham and his brother Hilary's home near Evesham. He was introduced to the area by C. S. Lewis, who had brought him here to meet George Sayer, the Head of English at Malvern College. Sayer had been a student of Lewis, and became his biographer, and together with them Tolkien would walk the Malvern Hills. Recordings of Tolkien reading excerpts from "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" were made in Malvern in 1952, at the home of George Sayer. The recordings were later issued on long-playing gramophone records. In the liner notes for "J.R.R. Tolkien Reads and Sings his The Hobbit & The Fellowship of the Ring", George Sayer wrote that Tolkien would relive the book as they walked and compared parts of the Malvern Hills to the White Mountains of Gondor.
Great Haywood
The village was home to the newly married Edith Tolkien, wife of famous author J. R. R. Tolkien, from March 1916 to February 1917. She moved to the village to be close to his camp on Cannock Chase. J. R. R. Tolkien himself lived in Great Haywood in the winter of 1916-17.
Stonyhurst College
Stonyhurst has provided inspiration for poets and authors who include former classics teacher Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose poems feature details of the local countryside, and former pupil Sir Arthur Conan Doyle whose "Baskerville Hall" was modelled on Stonyhurst Hall, and who named Sherlock Holmes' nemesis, Moriarty, after a fellow pupil. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote part of "The Lord of the Rings" in a classroom on the Upper Gallery during his stay at the college where his son taught Classics; his "Middle-earth" is said to resemble the local area, whilst there are specific resonances in names such as "Shire Lane", (the name of a road in Hurst Green) and the "River Shirebourn" (the Shireburns built Stonyhurst). Poet Laureate Alfred Austin, and the poet Oliver St John Gogarty ("Stately plump Buck Mulligan" in James Joyce's Ulysses) were educated at the school, (as were the sons of Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh). George Archer-Shee, at the centre of Terence Rattigan's play "The Winslow Boy", is an alumnus.
Edward Tangye Lean
After leaving Leighton Park School, Tangye Lean was an undergraduate at University College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he founded the original Inklings club around 1931, for the reading of unfinished compositions. The club consisted of students and dons, including J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. When Lean left Oxford in 1933, the club faltered. However, its name was transferred by Tolkien and Lewis to their literary group at Magdalen College. Lean also contributed to the "Isis" magazine at Oxford.
Tolkien fandom
A Tolkienist is someone who studies the work of J. R. R. Tolkien: this usually refers to students of the Elvish languages and "Tolkienology". The term Ringer refers to a fan of "The Lord of the Rings" in general, and of Peter Jackson's live-action film trilogy in particular. Other terms describing Tolkien fans include Tolkienite or Tolkiendil.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Sayers was a good friend of C. S. Lewis and several of the other Inklings. On some occasions, Sayers joined Lewis at meetings of the Socratic Club. Lewis said he read "The Man Born to Be King" every Easter, but he claimed to be unable to appreciate detective stories. J. R. R. Tolkien read some of the Wimsey novels but scorned the later ones, such as "Gaudy Night".
The Well at the World's End
Although the novel is relatively obscure by today's standards, it has had a significant influence on many notable fantasy authors. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien both seem to have found inspiration in "The Well at the World's End": ancient tables of stone, "King Gandolf," a "King Peter," and a quick, white horse named "Silverfax," an obvious inspiration for "Shadowfax," are only a few. Lewis was sufficiently enamored with Morris that he wrote an essay on that author, first read to an undergraduate society at Oxford University called the Martlets and later published in the collection of essays called "Rehabilitations".
J. R. R. Tolkien
One of Tolkien's least-known short works is the children's storybook "Mr. Bliss", published in 1982. It tells the story of Mr. Bliss and his first ride in his new motor-car. Many adventures follow: encounters with bears, angry neighbours, irate shopkeepers, and assorted collisions. The story was inspired by Tolkien's own vehicular mishaps with his first car, purchased in 1932. The bears were based on toy bears owned by Tolkien's sons. Tolkien was both author and illustrator of the book. He submitted it to his publishers as a balm to readers who were hungry for more from him after the success of "The Hobbit". The lavish ink and coloured-pencil illustrations would have made production costs prohibitively expensive. Tolkien agreed to redraw the pictures in a simpler style, but then found he did not have time to do so. The book was published in 1982 as a facsimile of Tolkien's difficult-to-read illustrated manuscript, with a typeset transcription on each facing page.
Daphne Olivier
Harwood was a friend of C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, a fellow follower of Steiner. Lewis was a frequent visitor to the couple’s home in London and became godfather to their son Laurence. She died in 1950 of cancer.
Tolkien family
Michael George Reuel Tolkien (born 1943) is a British poet. He is the grandson of J. R. R. Tolkien, being the eldest son of Michael H. R. Tolkien. Michael Tolkien was educated at The Oratory School in Oxford and then Ampleforth College. He studied English and Classics at St Andrews University and later a B.Phil. at Oxford. He taught as Head of English at Uppingham School until 1992. He has several volumes of published poetry including "Taking Cover", "Outstripping Gravity" and "Reaching for a Stranger." He is published by Redbeck Press. Michael Tolkien has two daughters, Catherine, born in 1969 and Ruth, born in 1982. He is married to the artist Rosemary Walters. He sits on the board of the Tolkien Company.
Edith Tolkien
Edith first met Tolkien early in 1908, when he and his younger brother Hilary moved into 37 Duchess Road by their guardian, Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory. At the time, Tolkien was 16 years old and Edith was 19. According to Humphrey Carpenter, "Edith and Ronald took to frequenting Birmingham teashops, especially one which had a balcony overlooking the pavement. There they would sit and throw sugarlumps into the hats of passers-by, moving to the next table when the sugar bowl was empty. ...With two people of their personalities and in their position, romance was bound to flourish. Both were orphans in need of affection, and they found that they could give it to each other. During the summer of 1909, they decided that they were in love."
Chip Duncan
"Tolkien & Lewis - Myth, Imagination and the Quest for Meaning" (released nationwide in the US on public television during September, 2017 by American Public Television (APT). The one hour documentary about the spiritual journey of author C.S. Lewis and his friendship with fellow Inkling and acclaimed author J.R.R. Tolkien was written & directed by Chip Duncan. The producers are Chip Duncan, Robert Huck, Patricia Ostermick and David Crouse. Iowa Public Television (IPTV) is the presenting station to the PBS system. The film includes scholars Christopher Mitchell, Reza Aslan, Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger among others.
Tolkien fandom
Across the continent, Glen GoodKnight founded the Mythopoeic Society in California in 1967 for the study, discussion, and enjoyment of fantastic and mythic literature, especially the works of Tolkien and fellow-Inklings C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. The society held its first Mythcon conference in 1970, which featured readings, a costume competition, an art show, and other events typical of science fiction conventions of the day. The society's three current periodicals are "Mythprint", a monthly bulletin; "Mythlore", originally a fanzine and now a peer-reviewed journal that publishes scholarly articles on mythic and fantastic literature; and "The Mythic Circle", a literary annual of original poetry and short stories (which replaced the Society's earlier publications "Mythril" and "Mythellany").
Works inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbitons was the name of a Dutch folk group who released a CD in 1996, containing 16 tracks of poems by J. R. R. Tolkien, from "The Hobbit", "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", and "The Lord of the Rings". Production was with permission of the Tolkien Estate, with the provision that it would not be sold commercially. The CD is sold out.
J. R. R. Tolkien
On 27 October 1916, as his battalion attacked Regina Trench, Tolkien came down with trench fever, a disease carried by the lice. He was invalided to England on 8 November 1916. Many of his dearest school friends were killed in the war. Among their number were Rob Gilson of the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, who was killed on the first day of the Somme while leading his men in the assault on Beaumont Hamel. Fellow T.C.B.S. member Geoffrey Smith was killed during the same battle when a German artillery shell landed on a first aid post. Tolkien's battalion was almost completely wiped out following his return to England.
Tolkien might well have been killed himself, but he had suffered from health problems and had been removed from combat multiple times.
T. James Belich
Belich has been heavily influenced by the works of such authors as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L'Engle.
George Watson (scholar)
He met C. S. Lewis at Oxford's Socratic Club in 1948 and attended his lectures. Later, he counted him among his finest professors and, after Watson joined Cambridge, among his colleagues. Among Watson's English students at St John's was Douglas Adams.
Forrest Reid
He was a close friend of Walter de la Mare, whom he first met in 1913, and about whose fiction he published a perceptive book in 1929. Reid was also an influence on novelist Stephen Gilbert, and had good connections to the Bloomsbury Group of writers. Reid was a founding member of the Imperial Art League (later the Artists League of Great Britain). Reid was also a close friend of Arthur Greeves, the artist known to be C. S. Lewis's best friend. Greeves painted several portraits of Reid, now all in the possession of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.
Raymond Wilson Chambers
Chambers was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and their careers parallel each other at many points: both were Catholics (Tolkien a Roman and Chambers an Anglo-Catholic), scholars of Old English literature, both experienced the horrors of trench warfare in World War I (Chambers was too old to be an enlisted man, however), and both wrote influentially on "Beowulf" (Chambers' writings were one of the inspirations for Tolkien's ""). Thomas Shippey described Chambers as "a patron and supporter of Tolkien in his early years."
Tolkien family
Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien (22 October 1920 – 27 February 1984) was a British teacher. He was J. R. R. Tolkien's second son and was named after J. R. R. Tolkien's brother Hilary. When young Michael lost his toy dog and became sad about this, his father began to write the story of "Roverandom" to comfort him. Michael's fear of spiders was J. R. R. Tolkien's inspiration for the encounter of Bilbo Baggins and the spiders of Mirkwood in "The Hobbit". Michael also used to own a Dutch doll which became an inspiration for Tom Bombadil. In 1939, Michael volunteered for the British Army but he was told to continue his university studies. He studied history at Trinity College, Oxford. In 1941, Michael Hilary Tolkien served in an anti-aircraft role during the Battle of Britain for which he was awarded the George Medal. He met a nurse named Joan Audrey Griffith (1916–1982) whom he married the same year. Later in World War II, he served as an anti-aircraft gunner in France and Germany. In 1944, he returned to Trinity College and finished his studies. He graduated in Modern History in 1945.
C. S. Lewis
Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age 9, when his mother died in 1908 from cancer. His father then sent him to live and study at Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire. Lewis's brother had enrolled there three years previously. The school was closed not long afterwards due to a lack of pupils; the headmaster Robert "Oldie" Capron was soon after committed to a psychiatric hospital. Lewis then attended Campbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but left after a few months due to respiratory problems. He was then sent to the health-resort town of Malvern, Worcestershire, where he attended the preparatory school Cherbourg House, which Lewis calls "Chartres" in his autobiography. It was during this time that Lewis abandoned his childhood Christian faith and became an atheist, becoming interested in mythology and the occult. In September 1913, Lewis enrolled at Malvern College, where he remained until the following June. He found the school socially competitive. After leaving Malvern, he studied privately with William T. Kirkpatrick, his father's old tutor and former headmaster of Lurgan College.
J. R. R. Tolkien
In 2012, Tolkien was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires.
Irish literature
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) and Louis MacNeice (1907–63) are two writers who were born and raised in Northern Ireland, but whose careers took them to England. C. S. Lewis was a poet, novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian, and Christian apologist. Born in Belfast, he held academic positions at both Oxford University, and Cambridge University. He is best known both for his fictional work, especially "The Screwtape Letters" (1942), "The Chronicles of Narnia" (1949–54), and "The Space Trilogy" (1938–45), and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as "Mere Christianity", "Miracles", and "The Problem of Pain". His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim. Louis MacNeice was a poet and playwright. He was part of the generation of "thirties poets" that included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis, nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group – a name invented by Roy Campbell, in his "Talking Bronco" (1946). His body of work was widely appreciated by the public during his lifetime. Never as overtly (or simplistically) political as some of his contemporaries, his work shows a humane opposition to totalitarianism as well as an acute awareness of his Irish roots. MacNeice felt estranged from the Presbyterian Northern Ireland, with its "voodoo of the Orange bands", but felt caught between British and Irish identities.
Tolkien family
Baillie Tolkien (née Klass) is the second wife of Christopher Tolkien. She was born in Winnipeg on 10 December 1941 to Dr. Alan Klass and his wife Helen. Alan Klass (1907–2000) was a surgeon and a distinguished member of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. Baillie attended McGill University and the University of Manitoba from which Baillie received her B.A. in 1962. She received her M.A. from St Hilda's College, Oxford in 1964. Her first husband was Brian Knapheis, a Rhodes Scholar from Winnipeg, to whom she was briefly married. While as Baillie Knapheis, she worked as a secretary, first to J.R.R. Tolkien and then to Isaiah Berlin. She married Christopher Tolkien on 18 September 1967. She has two children with Christopher. Their son Adam Reuel Tolkien was born in 1969, and their daughter Rachel Clare Reuel Tolkien was born in 1971. After the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, his letters written to his children were edited by Baillie for publication. The contents of the book were released in a 1976 book titled "The Father Christmas Letters", in which Baillie is credited as the editor. In the 1976–77 exhibition of paintings held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and afterwards at the National Book League in London, Baillie contributed a short introduction to the catalogue.
J. R. R. Tolkien
There are seven blue plaques in England that commemorate places associated with Tolkien: one in Oxford, one in Bournemouth, four in Birmingham and one in Leeds. One of the Birmingham plaques commemorates the inspiration provided by Sarehole Mill, near which he lived between the ages of four and eight, while two mark childhood homes up to the time he left to attend Oxford University and the other marks a hotel he stayed at before leaving for France during World War I. The plaque in West Park, Leeds, commemorates the five years Tolkien enjoyed at Leeds as Reader and then Professor of English Language at the University. The Oxford plaque commemorates the residence where Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit" and most of "The Lord of the Rings".
The Hobbit
On first publication in October 1937, "The Hobbit" was met with almost unanimously favourable reviews from publications both in the UK and the US, including "The Times", "Catholic World" and "New York Post". C. S. Lewis, friend of Tolkien (and later author of "The Chronicles of Narnia" between 1949 and 1954), writing in "The Times" reports:
Kathryn Lindskoog
Kathryn Ann "Kay" Lindskoog née Stillwell (December 26, 1934 – October 21, 2003) was a C. S. Lewis scholar known partly for her theory that some works attributed to Lewis are forgeries, including "The Dark Tower".
Isaac Asimov
Asimov enjoyed the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, using "The Lord of the Rings" as a plot point in a Black Widowers story. (Tolkien said that he enjoyed Asimov's science fiction.) He acknowledged other writers as superior to himself in talent, saying of Harlan Ellison, "He is (in my opinion) one of the best writers in the world, far more skilled at the art than I am." Asimov disapproved of the New Wave's growing influence, however, stating in 1967 "I want science fiction. I think science fiction isn't really science fiction if it lacks science. And I think the better and truer the science, the better and truer the science fiction". The feelings of friendship and respect between Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were demonstrated by the so-called "Clarke-Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue", negotiated as they shared a cab in New York. This stated that Asimov was required to insist that Clarke was the best science fiction writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself), while Clarke was required to insist that Asimov was the best science writer in the world (reserving second-best for himself). Thus, the dedication in Clarke's book "Report on Planet Three" (1972) reads: "In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction writer."
Christopher Tolkien
Christopher Tolkien currently lives a reclusive life far from media intrusion in the French countryside with his second wife, Baillie Tolkien (née Klass), who edited J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Father Christmas Letters" for posthumous publication. They have two children, Adam Reuel Tolkien and Rachel Clare Reuel Tolkien. In the wake of a dispute surrounding the making of "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy he reportedly disowned his son by his first marriage, barrister and novelist Simon Mario Reuel Tolkien, though they have since reconciled.
Steven A. Beebe
C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were planning on writing a book on language together in the 1940s, but the book was never published. Beebe discovered the opening pages of the manuscript in the Oxford University Bodleian Library. However, there was no proof that Tolkien worked on the project. Originally, the connection of the notes and draft style manuscript to what is now known as Language and Human Nature was not evident to Beebe. It was some time later that he realized what the notes in the book were indicators of the beginnings of the planned project between Lewis and Tolkien. Beebe relied on the help of other prominent C. S. Lewis scholars who are familiar with Lewis' handwriting to carefully transcribe all of the written words in the manuscript. Beebe teaches a reoccurring summer abroad course at Oxford titled "C.S. Lewis: Chronicles of a Master Communicator" about C. S. Lewis and communication sponsored by the Communication Studies Department at Texas State. In 2016 Beebe discovered an unpublished poem by C.S. Lewis in the Oxford University Bodleian library.
Christopher Tolkien
Tolkien had long been part of the critical audience for his father's fiction, first as a child listening to tales of Bilbo Baggins (which were published as "The Hobbit"), and then as a teenager and young adult offering much feedback on "The Lord of the Rings" during its 15-year gestation. He had the task of interpreting his father's sometimes self-contradictory maps of Middle-earth in order to produce the versions used in the books, and he re-drew the main map in the late 1970s to clarify the lettering and correct some errors and omissions. J. R. R. Tolkien invited Christopher to join the Inklings when he was twenty-one years old, making him the youngest member of the informal literary discussion society that included C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Warren Lewis, Lord David Cecil, and Nevill Coghill.
Doric dialect (Scotland)
George MacDonald from Huntly used Doric in his novels. A friend of Mark Twain, he is commonly considered one of the fathers of the fantasy genre and an influence on C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
Reception of J. R. R. Tolkien
Bootleg paperbacks published by Ace Books eventually found their way into colleges in the US in the 1960s. In response, a revised, authorized edition was published by Ballantine Books. The "hippie" following latched onto the book, giving its own spin to the work's interpretation, such as the Dark Lord Sauron representing the United States military draft during the Vietnam War, to the chagrin of the author who stated that "Many American fans enjoy the books in a way which I do not". 
Many fantasy series written in the period were created by fans of "The Lord of the Rings", such as the "Shannara" books by Terry Brooks.
There were active Tolkien enthusiasts within science fiction fandom from the mid-1950s. The first organized Tolkien fan group was "The Fellowship of the Ring", founded by fans including Ted Johnstone and Bruce Pelz at Pittcon, the 18th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in 1960. Articles on "The Lord of the Rings" had appeared regularly since 1962 in the science fiction fanzine "Niekas", edited by Ed Meskys.
Hugo Dyson
Henry Victor Dyson Dyson (7 April 1896 – 6 June 1975), generally known as Hugo Dyson and who signed his writings H. V. D. Dyson, was an English academic and a member of the Inklings literary group. He was a committed Christian, and together with J. R. R. Tolkien, he helped persuade C. S. Lewis to convert to Christianity.
P. R. Stephensen
Stephensen was a prolific author. He published over 30 books, as well as translations of works by Vladimir Lenin and Friedrich Nietzsche. He also produced nearly 70 books ghostwritten for historian Frank Clune. He was a friend of D. H. Lawrence and edited the first uncensored version of "Lady Chatterley's Lover". He was also friends with author Aldous Huxley.
J. S. Lewis
Lewis began his first novel at the age of fourteen with writing partner Derek Benz. Intended to be an epic fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien, Lewis and Benz never finished the manuscript.
Sterling E. Lanier
Lanier’s sculptures have been exhibited at a number of museums, including the Smithsonian Institution. He specialized in miniatures, among which were a series featuring characters from J. R. R. Tolkien’s "The Lord of the Rings ". One set was given to Tolkien himself, with whom Lanier corresponded. Tolkien reportedly admired the miniatures but did not want them to be marketed commercially, a wish Lanier respected.
Cecil Harwood
Cecil Harwood was the youngest of five children born into the household of a pastor. He attended school together with Owen Barfield, who became his life-long friend and co-worker in many areas of his life. Together they studied at Oxford University and were part of the circle of the Inklings that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien. His friendship with Daphne Olivier, who later became his wife, led him to meet Rudolf Steiner and subsequently, to found the first Waldorf school in England, the so-called “New School” that later became Michael Hall, together with her and three other colleagues. He remained connected to the school for the rest his life.
Robert Havard
In addition to his medical research papers, Havard authored an appendix for C. S. Lewis's "The Problem of Pain" as well as a description of Lewis included in "Remembering C. S. Lewis: Recollections of Those Who Knew Him" and one of J. R. R. Tolkien included in "Mythlore."
Roger Lancelyn Green
Roger Gilbert Lancelyn Green (2 November 1918 – 8 October 1987) was a British biographer and children's writer. He was an Oxford academic who formed part of the Inklings literary discussion group along with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.