The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Their Circle

by Sørina Higgins, The Great Courses

In the early decades of the 20th century, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and several of their friends and colleagues at Oxford University began meeting together to share and discuss their writing. Some were novelists, poets, philosophers, and scholars, while others were simply there to revel in language, stories, and ideas. They were certainly not the first men to join a college social club, nor were they the first writers to look to their peers for advice and encouragement. But the group these men created has become a notable chapter in modern literary history, producing some of the greatest stories in Western literature. Meet the Inklings.

The Inklings went through several transformations over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. In The C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Their Circle, you’ll meet the group in its many forms, with a special focus on the interwar years. Across 12 lectures, author and editor Dr. Sørina Higgins will introduce you to the Inklings and immerse you in their world as they conversed, theorized, collaborated, and debated. You’ll see how their friendship fueled their writing, including some of the most beloved works of imaginative fiction ever created. And for those who want to further explore the works that emerged from this collaboration, each lecture ends with a suggested story or full-length book for you to experience, equipped with your knowledge of the Inklings and their influences.

While you will spend plenty of time with the Inklings’ most famous members, you’ll also meet the lesser-known figures who helped make the Inklings both a social hub and an intellectual brotherhood. Writing is often seen as a solitary activity, yet, as you’ll discover, some of the best work created by these authors was the result not of lone genius but of the encouragement, critique, opposition, and collaboration of their friends and colleagues.

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Published July 10, 2026

About the author

Dr. Sørina Higgins is an editor, writer, English teacher, and scholar of British modernist literature. She once founded and ran a University Press and has served as a writing tutor and consultant for everything from doctoral dissertations to a Jungian dream-journal. Her academic work focuses on Charles Williams (The Oddest Inkling) and magic in modern drama.

She is currently revising a volume of short stories, Shall these Bones Breathe?, and previously published two books of poetry: Caduceus & The Significance of Swans.

Sørina lives on a homestead in upstate New York with her husband, a brace of cats, and a chattering of chickens.