And in their fledgling efforts as novelists, they served as each others first readers. They both avoided contemporary culture, neither had a car nor would drive one, and both largely ignored politics and the news. Initially Lewis noted some apprehension: In his diary, he wrote of the “smooth, pale, fluent little chap” that there was “no harm in him: only needs a smack or so.”īut the colleagues soon discovered they shared a like-minded interest in languages, poetry, myth and storytelling. Lewis and Tolkien first met in 1926 at a Merton College English Faculty meeting. Lewis attended Oxford, then onward from 1925 taught as a Fellow at the university’s Magdalen College (pronounced “maudlin”) until his departure in 1954. Aside from spending some retirement years in the suburbs and the seaside town of Bournemouth, Tolkien haunted Oxford nearly his entire adult life.įor three decades, Oxford was also full-time home to Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), author of The Chronicles of Narnia and Christian writings like The Screwtape Letters.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) lived in Oxford on and off for some 50 years: first from 1911-15 as a student, then from 1917-19 as a tutor and staff member of the New English Dictionary, and lastly as a professor of medieval languages and literature from 1925-59. I had come to see the dim pubs where he drank up inspiration and to visit the homes where he scribbled The Lord of the Rings, one of the biggest-selling and most-beloved books of all time.Īlas, I heard the trail was unmarked. Tolkien, the father of modern fantasy, and listen for remnants of his voice. Oxford–I had vowed to take Dead Man’s Walk.
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