Book Review: The Fellowship- The Literary Lives of the Inklings

You've heard of the Inklings before, or at least their two most famous members, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. They were a group of writers, historians, philosophers, philologists, and other thinkers based out of Oxford for three decades beginning after the first World War. Though their members might not have had some of the acclaim granted to many of their contemporaries, it's hard to point to another group as influential.

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Phillip and Carol Zaleski's The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings focuses on four primary Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams. Tolkien and Lewis get the greatest level of attention in the book, and quite deservedly so, but the book was heavily invested in exploring how the relationships between the various Inklings affected their work. And while the book largely focused on those four, it does spend time discussing many of the other twenty or so members.

The Inklings were an all white, all male, all Christian group. It was one of those last vestiges of the old British gentleman's club, where absolutely no women were allowed. (The modern day gentleman's club would be quite shocking to to them.) Despite the seeming homogeneity, however, there was quite a degree of diversity among their members. Tolkien was an extremely devout Roman Catholic. Lewis was a self-described "mere Christian" , a former atheist with Ulster sympathies, and an apologist with the fervor only a convert can possess. Owen Barfield was an Anthrosophist- an esoteric Christian society with some very, very strange beliefs.. Charles Williams was off on his own Christian mystical tangent filled with ritual sex magic (which he didn't partake in, oddly- he was utterly faithful to his wife when it came to sex, even though he had a large number of chaste "lovers") and other practices frankly heretical by most Christian standards of the time, or even today. And while women were quite explicitly banned from the group, it's all white status wasn't due to any rules- there just weren't really many non-white Oxford professors or intellectuals at the time. There was definitely a lot of racism in Oxford at the time, but it doesn't seem to have been particularly present amongst the core group of Inklings.

The Inklings met twice a week- once at the Oxford rooms of Lewis to critique each others' work and have serious conversations, and once at the Eagle and Child pub (or as they called it, The Bird and Baby) to enjoy each others' company and have a few drinks. (Though much serious work developed out of the pub meetings.)

The Inklings are essentially responsible for the state of the fantasy genre today. Lewis and Tolkien most obviously, thanks to Narnia and Middle-earth, but one of the common obsessions of the group was the restoration of mythology and folklore to its proper place. In fact, one of the main motivations Tolkien had for creating Middle-earth was to give England the folklore and mythology that it had been stripped of by the Norman invasion of 1066. Even outside the fantasy genre, however, they've had a huge impact. Saul Bellow, for instance, was heavily influenced by and a devotee of Owen Barfield.

The Inklings were also responsible for altering much of the literary community's readings of writers and poets past- Owen Barfield, for instance, was greatly responsible for rehabilitating Coleridge and showing that his ideas weren't just an opium fueled muddle, but actually a satisfying and coherent worldview. The Inklings also led the successful charge to exclude modern literature from the Oxford English curriculum. Tolkien, for instance, believed that needing a teacher's assistance to read the literature of one's contemporaries is akin to an adult needing wetnurse.

The Fellowship, for all that it covers what should be dry, bland material is anything but. I actually found it hard to put down at times- never something I thought I would say about a dense tome filled with discussions of minor linguistic debates and in depth discussions of specialist literary criticism journals of the early and middle twentieth centuries. I went in just wanting a biography of Tolkien and Lewis, but got with it a thoughtful, carefully researched analysis of their role in and influence on modern thought and literature. It's well worth the read for anyone who's a fan of any of the Inklings.