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28 January 2012

Nineteen Inklings, give or take

According to Humphrey Carpenter, in his excellent (if not flawless) book The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends, this is the total list of attendees at Thursday evening Inklings meetings:
Owen Barfield
J .A.W. Bennett
Lord David Cecil
Nevill Coghill
James Dundas-Grant
H.V.D. Dyson
Adam Fox
Colin Hardie
Robert E. Havard
C.S. Lewis
Warren Lewis
Gervase Mathew
R.B. McCallum
C.E. Stevens
Christopher Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien
John Wain
Charles Williams
C.L. Wrenn

Just in case you wanted to know.


4 comments:

Rosie Perera said...

Have any of the others besides the well known ones (Owen Barfield, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams) ever written anything worth reading? I've heard only peripherally of Hugo Dyson (Lewis cites him as being instrumental in his conversion, "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ--in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.") Warren "Warnie" Lewis was of course CSL's brother, and Christopher Tolkien was JRRT's son. I've never heard of any of the others.

Sørina Higgins said...

Here is David Bratman's complete list of all their published works: http://home.earthlink.net/~dbratman/inklings.html.

J.A.W. Bennett's stuff on Chaucer has a good scholarly reputation, I believe.

Coghill's work, both scholarly and as a theatre director, is excellent. I believe that he founded the Shakespeare Theatre in Oxford, and I know he directed Richard Burton at some point. (But you asked about writings).

Adam Fox was a poet and elected Poetry Professor at Oxford (mostly due to Lewis's avid campaigning), but I've never read any of his poetry.

Havard, a medical doctor, wrote the clinical appendix to Lewis's "The Problem of Pain."

Warren Lewis's books of French history are reportedly very readable and still valuable to historians.

Christopher Tolkien of course mostly works on bringing his father's unfinished and unedited works to press.

John Wain was a fairly prolific author of poetry, fiction, and drama (which I've never read). His "Sprightly Running: Part of an Autobiography" is supposed to be a lively read.

Wrenn was a fairly noteworthy scholar, and I do believe his philological stuff was and is respected.

The best book to read to answer your question is "The Company They Keep" by Diana Glyer, although it does really focus on "the big Four" you mentioned.

Rosie Perera said...

Thanks for that list. I have Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry because it's been recommended by Regent faculty members, but I haven't read it yet.

Sørina Higgins said...

I've also heard that Barfield's "Poetic Diction" is kind of THE ONE to read -- and I recently enjoyed "Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis" (which I reviewed for the upcoming issue of Sehnsucht).