There’s been a certain amount of confusion about what defined an Inkling. To clarify, the Inklings were a group of British writers/scholars who met on Thursday evenings to read their work at Lewis’ rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford.
The Inklings also had less formal Tuesday morning meetings, usually at Oxford pub The Eagle and Child (or as they called it, “The Bird and the Baby”). Lewis started the Inklings in the early 1930s, taking the name from a disbanded Oxford group. Most of the Inklings were Oxford scholars (some, like Hugo Dyson, taught at other institutions, then moved to Oxford). The Inklings stopped meeting in 1949, apparently due to lost momentum. Some members continued meeting in other contexts.
Humphrey Carpenter’s seminal study The Inklings lists 19 men who are considered canonical Inklings (David Bratman's “A Handlist of Books by the Inklings” lists their works). Occasional or one-time attendees included writer Roy Campbell and fantasy novelist E.R. Eddison (the Mythopoeic Society’s overview of the Inklings defines them as guests).
Alongside guests, various people met the Inklings in other contexts. Roger Lancelyn Green and W.H. Auden knew individual Inklings but didn’t attend Inklings meetings. T.S. Eliot knew one Inkling, Charles Williams, and befriended Lewis in 1959. Before that, Lewis saw Eliot as an enemy (or at least a representative of trends he disliked).
Similarly, Dorothy L. Sayers was friends with two Inklings (Lewis and Williams). Joy Davidman married Lewis in 1956 and knew his brother Warnie. These women certainly had a great impact on more than one Inkling. However, scholars usually refer to them as part of “the Inklings’ circle” or “the Inklings and their associates.”
No comments:
Post a Comment