C. S. Lewis
Lewis and fellow novelist J. R. R. Tolkien were close friends. They both served on the English faculty at Oxford University, and were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings. According to Lewis's memoir "Surprised by Joy", he was baptised in the Church of Ireland, but fell away from his faith during adolescence. Lewis returned to Anglicanism at the age of 32, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary layman of the Church of England". Lewis's faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
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).