The Fellowship

The Literary LIves of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams

By: Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski

Narrated by: John Curless

Length: 26 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's summary

A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J. R. R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis' Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.

In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. Lewis maps the medieval mind, accepts Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into a breathtaking story in The Lord of the Rings while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. This extraordinary group biography also focuses on Charles Williams, strange acolyte of Romantic love, and Owen Barfield, an esoteric philosopher who became, for a time, Saul Bellow's guru. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized sanity, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the 20th century's darkest years - and did so.

©2015 Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski (P)2015 Recorded Books

Well worth a listen

Get to know the foremost members of the Inklings. The authors are thorough and easy to follow. The narration is excellent. A combination of biography, history, thought and literature in twentieth century Oxford.

a pleasant way to learn about Lewis & Tolkien

If you want some insight into how CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien became the men who wrote their famous works, you'll find that out and more. I finished with a greater apreciation for their place in the literary world. Barfield and Williams do not receive the same exposure, but their place in the lives of Lewis and Tolkien opens the door to their own creativity. I enjoyed it all.

Inspiring and highly informative

This is the best treatment of the Inklings I know of. It's worth the price for each of its biographies of Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, and Barfield alone. But it's much more than that. If you want to appreciate their achievement as a group, then this book is for you. The reader is excellent, too, and makes listening to it being read a pure joy.

Very Thorough and Pleasantly Long

This work benefits from being longer than many studies (including Humphrey Carpenter’s) of the Inklings, and the authors use their well spent time to enlarge on peripheral characters. Despite negative reviews above, there is not too much time wasted on summaries of literary works and each summery succinctly adds to a necessary understanding of each character’s philosophy.
I greatly appreciated the enlarged view of a group every literary student should study.
The narrator was awesome!

Masterful.

Well-researched, deeply thought, well written. great book for fans and those intrigued by the Inklings.

The Fellowship of the Inkings

I listened to this book on Audible in the car while traveling. It was quite fascinating and informative. Although a bit dry, I think it was worth the time and effort. It would be an excellent college text.
Each of the Inklings: Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, and Barfield, were discussed by the authors in individual biographical terms. Further discussion included the Inklings personal associations with each other. For example, The Inklings’ met 2 times a week for close to 40 years. Their meetings were comprised of great discussions and the reading of new chapters aloud from their current works. The relationships between the Inklings and the interchange between the members is also a theme throughout. The Inkling members had similar backgrounds and devotion to various Christian beliefs, this allowed for debate, and deep conversations about their work and their philosophies of life.
The Inklings appear in various degrees to have had healthy imaginary lives as children. That creativity helped them focus on the study of fairytales, mythologies, cultures, and religious beliefs. Their youthful interest fostered the foundations that allowed for adult imaginings and fairy tales that continued to inspire their writing.
I cannot say I would have read the book cover to cover because it was a bit like a college textbook. But listening to it enabled me to enjoy the process of learning about the Inklings in more depth. I believe that for Tolkien or Lewis fans this is a fascinating read.

Too much Lewis, but well worth reading

Several years ago I read a ton of books by and about CS Lewis. I am still fascinated by Lewis, and there is still more to read by or about Lewis, but at this point much that I read about Lewis is repetition. So I was a bit reluctant to read The Fellowship because one of the complaints about it, is that it is too much about Lewis and not enough about the others. That complaint is valid. Although the Zaleskis managed to include new information about Lewis and the others, once I got past the initial introduction of the characters.

The Fellowship is not a short book. I listened to it on audiobook and it was over 26 hours (nearly 700 pages). While I did set it down a couple times, it was interesting and well written. Primarily I was interested in the biography of Charles Williams. He was one of the earliest Inklings to pass away (1945), but he was an important, but odd, member. Williams was the only member that was not highly educated (never competing a college degree). Gut as an editor at Oxford University Press, Williams came up through an alternative system of learning about writing. Williams was certainly odd. He was fascinated with the occult and magic and seemed to have a certain sexual appeal that he took advantage of, potentially to the level sexually abusing some women. At the very least he was a serial adulterer.

William is just one example of a mix of people that surrounded JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. Both Lewis and Tolkien, were clearly orthodox Christians, and at least after Lewis’ conversion, they were both very conventional in their morality. But many of the others around them were not. It was not just Williams. Barfield was fascinated by, and a proponent of, Anthroposophy, a pseudo-scientific, semi-religious rationalistic philosophy. Most manifestations of it were clearly not compatible with orthodox Christianity.

But what the Inklings did do is create a community that encouraged writing. Not everyone was a fiction writer. Lewis wrote a number of non-fiction works, Warren Lewis (CS Lewis’ older brother) was primarily a historian, Barfield and others wrote a mix of non-fiction and fiction. But it was through fiction, primarily fantasy that the Inklings really changed the course of 20th century literature. I tend to think of epic fantasy as an old genre. But epic fantasy, as it is not understood, really is dependent on The Lord of the Rings. And lighter fantasy has been significantly influenced by the Chronicles of Narnia. The Zaleskis assert that the Inklings did not start to fall apart upon Williams’ death, as some have proposed. Instead, they suggest that, while his death was important, the group started to wane as a natural progress of the aging of the group (and being pulled by work and family needs) and the inclusion of some of the newer members that were less compassionate toward fantasy writing. (Tolkien never read any of the Lord of the Rings to the group and Lewis seems to have not read much of the later Narnia books to the Inklings because the group was not particularly supportive by the time the books were being worked on.)

Part of what is fascinating about the group is that while it is viewed as incredibly successful group of writers now, much of their fame was posthumous. Lewis was genuinely famous prior to his death. But his fame grew much larger after his death. Tolkien, through the editing of his son, published much more after his death than prior to his death. Williams, while much less known, died early and was not particularly successful prior to his death. Barfield retired as a lawyer when he was 60 and spent most of the rest of his life (he passed away when he was 99) as a traveling speaker and professor and finally getting to write in ways that he did not have opportunity while the Inklings was active.

The early part of The Fellowship was fairly boring because it was basic info that I was very familiar with. It was only later when the other characters were introduced and there was actual analysis of writing or the group that the book picked up. I was ready to give up about half way through the book. But I am glad that I did not. The second half of the book was much better.

Wonderful

This really is a fantastic book. The interweaving of the lives of the inklings with one another through their biography and literary output is masterfully organized!

Insightful

This audio book of the Inklings was very well delivered. I enjoyed listening to the reading.

A Thorough Moving Tribute

Absolutely fascinating read for devotees of the Oxford phenomenon. I have read several biographies of the key members- Lewis, Tolkien, Williams,etc -but not until filling out the edges with the stories of how they interacted together did I appreciate the joyfulness, intellectual depth and spiritual searching that came from these timely friendships. I have to admit that whilst thoroughly enjoying the intellectual stimulation of following the various paths of philosophy and debate, I also found myself moved to tears a few times! A Great balance of their humanity... and beyond.