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The Inklings

C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends

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About this listen

During the 1930s at Oxford, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams - remarkable friends, writers, and scholars - met regularly to discuss philosophy and literature and to read aloud from their own works in progress. Calling themselves the Inklings, their circle grew. It was in this company that such classics as The Lord of the Rings, The Screwtape Letters, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first found an audience.

Author Humphrey Carpenter was born in Oxford and was acquainted with Tolkien, Hugo Dyson, and several other Inklings. In this remarkable reconstruction of their meetings and momentous friendships, Carpenter brings to life those warm and enchanting evenings in Lewis' rooms at Magdalen College, when their imaginations ran wild. His account offers exciting insights into the influence these brilliant individuals had on each other's developing ideas and writing.

©1990 Humphrey Carpenter (P)1990 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Art & Literature Authors European Literary History & Criticism World Literature Celebrity Feel-Good Middle Ages
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I would fecommend it for the English, but also the story. I learned a lot and enjoyed the glinpse into academia in old England.

a pleasant historic story well told,

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This book shines an interesting (if at times a bit of a scholarly or literary) light on several interlinked personalities involved in what can only be considered one of the most impactful literary milieux of the 20th century, the effects of their individual efforts in varying degrees still reaching us today.
The book has a heavy focus on CS Lewis and in lesser degree on Charles Williams, even less so on Tolkien, but the overall effect is a thoroughly insightful look into how these men did (and didn't) impact eachothers creative processes and personal philosophies, the take away one has is that we should feel a great deal of gratitude for their continued friendships and encouragement of one anothers genius, without this at times chaotic intermarriage of minds so many of the works we love or may still come to discover may never have seen print.

Interesting insights

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It has been wonderful to get a glimpse of the world of C S Lewis & J R R Tolkein. Excellent all round.

I Was Sorry To Come To The End

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The work provides a fascinating insight into the interactions, lives and creative habits of a remarkable group. The only part I had difficulty with was the imagined scene of an Inklings session, which drew its dialogue from a wide range other participants writings, and speculated as to how they might have interacted. I'm not sure I see the value in such speculations, and the effects was let down by quite how familiar so much of the quoted material now is. The rest of the book was excellent, though the largely uncritical account of Lewis' views on women in chapter 11 stands up poorly.

One hesitates to criticise too much the performance. It is expressive, and engages the listener with the ideas. I can offer a moment. understand the person who in these comments described it as 'monotone'. Certainly the audio quality is reflective of its time. There is now a vast array of published material on pronunciation which was not then available, and an understanding by audiobook producers of the importance of accurate pronunciations in Tolkien's works in particular is now so much more firmly rooted. There is no escaping however, the jarring note presented by errors such as 'Moria' being pronounced in such a way as to invite the surname Carey.

Overall, mixed feelings about this one.

A flawed masterpiece and a difficult performance.

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I was very interested in this book, which was well read and pleasant to listen to. The facts of these men’s lives and their stories are fascinating. However, Humphrey Carpenter appears sympathetic with all of his characters except Lewis, whom he seems to feel himself on a mission to ‘reveal’ as less worthy than other biographies have painted him. His supposed revelations are unsympathetic, unperceptive and occasionally ridiculous- as for example his wholly unnecessary and clearly untrue suggestion that Lewis’s marriage might not have been consummated. Worse, he is blind to God and things of the spirit, and almost all of his assumptions about Christianity - and therefore Lewis’s beliefs - are wrong-headed.
I still value this book for its biographical evocation of an era and an elite society within that era, but I gradually had to learn to disregard many of its supposed insights.

Unsympathetic to Christianity

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