The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings -- JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, c. 2015.
I'm pretty sure I had spent some time with this book at the Grapevine Library in the past year or so but I can't find any mention of it on this blog.
So, we will start today.
The "Inklings":
- Oxford writers
- from the end of the Great Depression through WWII and into the 1950s
- agitators
The four (but there were others joined, reveled in, and (sometimes) quit:
- Charles Williams: the first to be born, the first to publish, the first to die;
- Clive Staples Lewis: the most celebrated and execrated;
- Owen Barfield: the least known, but, some say, the most profound;
- John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
Chapter 1: starts with JRR Tolkien
he was the first to create work that bears the group's special stamp of Christian faith blended with pagan beauty, of fantastic stories grounded in moral realism
starts with JRR's mother Mabel; irony -- the group rigorously excluded women
his mother was responsible for JRR's madly spinning top of a mind
Chapter 2: CS Lewis
Chapter 3: JRR enters Oxford, October, 1911
Chapter 4: a young CS Lewis.
Chapter 5: Owen Barfield.
Chapter 6: JRR
page 123: JRR overjoyed to be back in "dear old Blighty" -- a trench soldier's affectionate term for Britain, derived, via the Raj, from the Hindi bilayati, "foreigner."
Chapter 7: CS Lewis during the 1920s
Chapter 8: first meeting between CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien
Chapter 9: Inklings assemble, first date mentioned -- 1932
Chapter 10: Charles Williams; not like the other Inklings (the other three covered in this book).
Chapter 11: JRR enjoying his share of praise and laurels
Chapter 12: war again. First date mentioned, Oxford, September 4, 1939, Charles Williams, arriving from London.
Chapter 13: Mere Christians. One of the longer chapters.
Chapter 14: as the war wound down, so did Charles Williams. Loss and gain.
Chapter 15: Miracles. CS Lewis.
Chapter 16:
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