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Inklings
The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy. The best-known, apart from Tolkien and Lewis, were Charles Williams, and (although a Londoner) Owen Barfield. Members The more regular members of the Inklings, many of them academics at the University, included: * Owen Barfield * Jack A. W. Bennett * Lord David Cecil * Nevill Coghill * Hugo Dyson * Adam Fox * Robert Havard * C. S. Lewis * Warren Lewis (C. S. Lewis's elder brother) * J. R. R. Tolkien * Christopher Tolkien (J. R. R. Tolkien's son) * Charles Williams More infrequent visitors included: * James Dundas-Grant * Colin Hardie * Gervase Mathew * R. B. McCallum * Courtenay Edward Stevens * John Wain * Charles Leslie Wrenn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Owen Barfield
Arthur Owen Barfield (9 November 1898 – 14 December 1997) was a British philosopher, author, poet, critic, and member of the Inklings. Life Barfield was born in London, to Elizabeth (née Shoults; 1860–1940) and Arthur Edward Barfield (1864–1938). He had three elder siblings: Diana (1891–1963), Barbara (1892–1951), and Harry (1895–1977). He was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford and in 1920 received a first class degree in English language and literature. After finishing his B. Litt., which became his third book ''Poetic Diction'', he was a dedicated poet and author for over ten years. After 1934 his profession was as a solicitor in London, from which he retired in 1959 aged 60. Thereafter he had many guest appointments as Visiting Professor in North America. Barfield published numerous essays, books, and articles. His primary focus was on what he called the "evolution of consciousness," which is an idea which occurs frequently in his writings. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Williams (British Writer)
Charles Walter Stansby Williams (20 September 1886 – 15 May 1945) was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group associated with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien at the University of Oxford. Early life and education Charles Williams was born in London in 1886, the only son of (Richard) Walter Stansby Williams (1848–1929) and Mary (née Wall). His father Walter was a journalist and foreign business correspondent for an importing firm, writing in French and German, who was a 'regular and valued' contributor of verse, stories and articles to many popular magazines. His mother Mary, the sister of the ecclesiologist and historian J. Charles Wall), was a former milliner (hatmaker), of Islington. He had one sister, Edith, born in 1889. The Williams family lived in 'shabby-genteel' circumstances, owing to Walter's increasing blindness and the decline of the firm by which he was employed, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam Fox (poet)
Adam Fox (1883–1977), Canon, was the Dean of Divinity at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was one of the first members of the literary group " Inklings". He was Oxford Professor of Poetry and later he became Canon of Westminster Abbey. He was also warden of Radley College. Biography He was headmaster of the Radley College (1918–1924). Between 1938 and 1942 he was Oxford Professor of Poetry. Later he became Canon of Westminster Abbey and he is buried there in Poets' Corner. During his time at Oxford, he wrote his long poem in four books " Old King Coel". It gets its name from King Cole, legendary British father of the Roman Empress Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. As Professor of Poetry, Fox advocated poetry which is intelligible to readers, and gives enough pleasure to be read again. He was one of the first members of the " Inklings", a literary group which also included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. In his 1945 ''Plato for Pleasure'', he tried to introduc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Notion Club Papers
''The Notion Club Papers'' is an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written during 1945 and published posthumously in ''Sauron Defeated'', the 9th volume of ''The History of Middle-earth''. It is a time travel story, written while ''The Lord of the Rings'' was being developed. The Notion Club is a fictionalization of (and a play on words on the name of) Tolkien's own such club, the Inklings. Although unfinished, the text of ''The Notion Club Papers'' runs for some 120 pages in ''Sauron Defeated''. Embedded within the story are Tolkien's versions of European legends: ''King Sheave'', and '' The Death of St. Brendan'', a three-page poem also titled 'Imram'. ''Sauron Defeated'' includes some further 40 pages of Christopher Tolkien's commentary and notes on ''The Notion Club Papers'', and reproduces examples of the pages hand-written by his father. Plot The story revolves around the meetings of an Oxford arts discussion group, the Notion Club. During these meetings, Alwin Arundel L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warren Lewis
Warren Hamilton Lewis (16 June 1895 – 9 April 1973) was a British historian and officer in the British Army, best known as the elder brother of writer and professor C. S. Lewis. Warren Lewis was a supply officer with the Royal Army Service Corps of the British Army during and after the First World War. After retiring in 1932 to live with his brother in Oxford, he was one of the founding members of the "Inklings", an informal Oxford literary society. He wrote on French history, and served as his brother's secretary for the later years of C. S. Lewis's life. Early life C. S. Lewis referred to his older brother Warren ("Warnie") as "my dearest and closest friend". The lifelong friendship was formed as the boys played together in their home Little Lea, on the outskirts of Belfast, writing and illustrating stories for their created world called " Boxen" (a combination of India and a previous incarnation called "Animal-Land"). In 1908, their mother died from cancer and as their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roy Campbell (poet)
Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell (2 October 1901 – 23 April 1957), was a South African poet, literary critic, literary translator, war poet, and satirist. Born into a White South African family of Scottish descent in Durban, Colony of Natal, Campbell was sent to England to attend Oxford University. Instead, Campbell drifted into London's literary bohemia. Following his marriage to bohemian Mary Garman, Campbell wrote the well-received poem ''The Flaming Terrapin'' which brought the Campbells into the highest circles of British literature. After supporting racial equality during a stay in South Africa as editor of the literary magazine ''Voorslag'', Campbell returned to England and became involved with the Bloomsbury Group. Campbell ultimately decided that the Bloomsbury Group was snobbish, promiscuous, nihilistic, and anti-Christian. Campbell lampooned them in a mock-epic poem called ''The Georgiad'', which damaged Campbell's reputation in l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Leslie Wrenn
Charles Leslie Wrenn (1895–1969) was an English scholar. After taking an MA at the University of Oxford, he worked for a year as a lecturer in the department of English Language and Literature at the University of Leeds in 1928–29. Following his return to Oxford, he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon 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, and met for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. 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. Eliot. Selected writings *''The Englis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Wain
John Barrington Wain CBE (14 March 1925 – 24 May 1994) was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated with the literary group known as "The Movement". He worked for most of his life as a freelance journalist and author, writing and reviewing for newspapers and the radio. Life and education Wain was born and grew up in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, the son of a dentist, Arnold Wain, and his wife Annie, née Turner. He had an older sister and a younger brother, Noel. After attending Newcastle under Lyme High School, he entered St. John's College, Oxford, gaining a first in his BA in 1946 and an MA in 1950. He was a Fereday Fellow of St John's between 1946 and 1949. On 4 July 1947, Wain married Marianne Uffenheimer (born 1923 or 1924), but they divorced in 1956. He then married Eirian Mary James (1920–1988), deputy director of the recorded sound department of the British Council, on 1 January 1960. They had three sons and lived mainly in Wolvercote, Oxford. Wain marr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Courtenay Edward Stevens
Courtenay Edward Stevens (14 April 1905 – 1 September 1976) was a British classicist. He was educated at Winchester College and received a first class degree in literae humaniores ("the Greats") from New College, Oxford. Stevens remained at Oxford after graduation, receiving scholarships and, in 1933, a research fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, Magdalen College. During the Second World War he worked for British military intelligence, specialising in propaganda. Stevens produced German-language newspapers and broadcasts and suggested the use of the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for Allied broadcasts. After the war he returned to Magdalen, taking on a huge teaching workload of up to 72 hours per week. Stevens enjoyed success, in partnership with the philosopher J. L. Austin, in preparing students for examination in the Greats. He served as vice-president of the college from 1950–51. Education and early career Stevens was born on 14 April 1905 and educate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colin Hardie
Colin Graham Hardie (16 February 1906 – 17 October 1998) was a British classicist and academic. From 1933 to 1936, he was Director of the British School at Rome. From 1936 to 1973, he was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and a tutor in classics. In addition, from 1967 to 1973, he was the Public Orator of the University of Oxford. He was a member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group which included the likes of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Early life Hardie was born on 16 February 1906 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the third son of William Ross Hardie and his wife Isabella Watt Hardie (née Stevenson). His father was a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and Professor of Humanity at the University of Edinburgh. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy, an independent school. He then went on to study at Balliol College, University of Oxford as a Warner Exhibitioner and Honorary Scholar. He took firsts in both Mods (1926) and Greats (1928). He won four classica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Havard
Dr. Robert Emlyn Havard (1901–1985) was the physician of C.S. Lewis, his wife Joy Gresham, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Havard has also been credited as a "skilled and prolific writer". Interactions with other writer 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.'' Lewis invited Havard to join the Oxford-based Inklings because of the literary interests he shared with that group. Like Tolkien, he was a Roman Catholic. Havard was sometimes referred to by the Inklings as the "Useless Quack," mainly because Warren Lewis once called him so upon being irritated by his tardiness, and his brother, Jack, thought it quite amusing at the time and caused the nickname to continue. The abbreviation "U.Q." was thereafter a common reference to Havard. Hugo Dyson once calle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 C. S. Lewis to convert to Christianity, particularly after a long conversation as they strolled on Addison's Walk at Oxford. Career Academia Dyson taught English at the University of Reading from 1924 until obtaining a fellowship with Merton College, Oxford, in 1945. His students at Oxford included the later cultural theorist Stuart Hall, whom he tutored in the early 1950s. Dyson retired in 1963 but returned as emeritus fellow in 1969, teaching the newly introduced "modern" literature paper. His tutorials were notable because many of the writers he discussed had been personal friends. Works Dyson was not a prolific writer, but the quality and voluminous quantity of his lectures and general conversation had q ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
