C. S. Lewis
Lewis was commissioned to write the volume "English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama)" for the Oxford History of English Literature, His book "A Preface to "Paradise Lost"" is still cited as a criticism of that work. His last academic work, "The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature" (1964), is a summary of the medieval world view, a reference to the "discarded image" of the cosmos.
Lewis was a prolific writer, and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the "Inklings", including J. R. R. Tolkien, Nevill Coghill, Lord David Cecil, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and his brother Warren Lewis. Glyer points to December 1929 as the Inklings' beginning date. Lewis's friendship with Coghill and Tolkien grew during their time as members of the Kolbítar, an Old Norse reading group that Tolkien founded and which ended around the time of the inception of the Inklings. At Oxford, he was the tutor of poet John Betjeman, critic Kenneth Tynan, mystic Bede Griffiths, novelist Roger Lancelyn Green and Sufi scholar Martin Lings, among many other undergraduates. Curiously, the religious and conservative Betjeman detested Lewis, whereas the anti-establishment Tynan retained a lifelong admiration for him.
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.