The Inklings in Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography

compiled by David Bratman

This bibliography was originally the reading list for a paper on "The Inklings in Fiction" that I gave at Mythcon 40 (Los Angeles, 2009). An earlier version was published in the January 2010 issue of Mythprint, the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society.

By "The Inklings in Fiction" I mean depictions of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and their friends and colleagues as characters in stories or novels. These come in three forms:

1. Characters who are, or purport to be, the Inklings themselves, usually as heroes of fantasy adventures or making tiny cameo appearances in stories with historical settings;
2. Romans à clef, that is, stories whose characters are the Inklings with the names and some identifying details changed;
3. Characters who are not supposed to be the Inklings, but whose personalities or character are, or are claimed to be, directly based on them.

Relevant fiction by the Inklings themselves (Tolkien, Lewis, and Barfield) is covered thoroughly in Chapter 7 of The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2007), to which reference is made below. However, self-portraits in works by the Inklings themselves are not covered here, as an author's personality may be found embedded in all his works.

Thanks to those who have contributed items or otherwise helped with this list: Joe R. Christopher, Diana Pavlac Glyer, Janet Brennan Croft, Jason Fisher, John D. Rateliff, Wendell Wagner, Sherwood Smith, Brenda Clough, Don Williams, Ginger McElwee, William H. Stoddard.

New accounts of the Inklings in fiction are published frequently. Let me know of any you have found.

• Allingham, Margery. More Work for the Undertaker. London: Heinemann, 1949. Eric Routley (The Puritan Pleasures of the Detective Story [London: Gollancz, 1972], p. 151) suggests that Inspector Charles Luke in this mystery novel is based on Williams.
• Barfield, Owen. "Night Operation." Originally serialized 1983-84; reprinted in A Barfield Sampler (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993) and separately (U.K.: Barfield Press, 2008). Dystopian science fiction story featuring characters, Jon and Jak, whose relationship of friendship through opposition resembles that of Barfield and Lewis (Glyer, p. 173-74).
• Barfield, Owen. This Ever Diverse Pair. Originally published as by G.A.L. Burgeon. London: Gollancz, 1950. Thinly fictionalized account of the author's life as a lawyer. Chapter 6 recounts his dealings with the tax problems of a client's authorial royalties. Apart from the client's name, Ramsden, this is apparently a straightforward factual account of a matter involving C.S. Lewis (Glyer, p. 175-76).
• Barfield, Owen. Worlds Apart. London: Faber, 1963. Novel in the form of a transcript of a long philosophical discussion among several characters. Hunter, a theologian and ethicist, represents C.S. Lewis (Glyer, p. 174-75).
• Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. This literary group biography is non-fiction, but includes a chapter (Part 3, chapter 3) reconstructing the conversation at an imaginary typical Inklings meeting, with C.S. and W.H. Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, and R.E. Havard in attendance.
• Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Equivalently to The Inklings, but without dialogue, this biography illustrates its subject with a chapter (Part 4, chapter 1) describing an imaginary but typical day in his life from the early 1930s. This is before the Inklings, but Lewis and the other future Inklings R.B. McCallum and Nevill Coghill are mentioned.
• Christie, Agatha. "Harlequin's Lane." In The Mysterious Mr. Quin. London: Collins, 1930. Grevel Lindop (Charles Williams and His Contemporaries, ed. Bray & Sturch [Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009], p. 14) finds a critical portrait of Williams in the composer Claude Wickham of this story, and a parallel to Descent into Hell's play rehearsal in the story's opera-rehearsal plot.
• Clough, Brenda W. "Escape Hatch." Paradox 3, Autumn 2003. Reprinted in Book View Cafe. Short story in which C.S. Lewis, in the trenches in World War I, has a glimpse of Faerie and is introduced to Tolkien through the unlikely offices of James Joyce.
• Crispin, Edmund. The Case of the Gilded Fly. London: Gollancz, 1944. John Heath-Stubbs (Inklings Jahrbuch 5 [1987], p. 68) and Grevel Lindop (p. 13) suggest that the playwright Robert Warner in this mystery novel is based on Williams. (Probably less seriously, a character in Philip Larkin's "Michaelmas Term at St. Bride's" [q.v.] claims that the detective, Gervase Fen, an English professor at Oxford, is a "horribly malicious ... caricature of [C.S.] Lewis.")
• Crispin, Edmund. Swan Song. London: Gollancz, 1947. Mystery novel with an Inklings cameo. In chapter 8 the detective sits in the Bird and Baby and notes C.S. Lewis walking by; "it must be Tuesday." Notable as a contemporary reference, made while the Inklings were still meeting there.
• Dexter, Colin. The Secret of Annexe 3. New York: St. Martin's, 1986. Mystery novel with an Inklings reference: the detectives sit in the Bird and Baby and read the Inklings plaque (p. 71).
• Doran, T.M. Toward the Gleam. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011. "Secret history" novel about a professor in England who finds a manuscript revealing an unknown ancient civilization. This plunges him into adventures. According to reports, the protagonist is based on Tolkien, and a Lewis-based character appears among his friends.
• Downing, David C. Looking for the King. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010. "Secret history" adventure novel by a Lewis scholar. Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien become mentors and information sources for two young Americans looking for Arthurian artifacts around England in 1940. Other Inklings (Havard and Hugo Dyson) appear in a scene set at an Inklings pub meeting.
• Egan, Greg. "Oracle." Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 2000. Reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighteenth Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois (New York: St. Martin's/Griffin, 2001), and in Year's Best SF 6, ed. David G. Hartwell (New York: Eos, 2001). Science fiction story about a debate between characters identical to Alan Turing and C.S. Lewis on the question, "Can Machines Think?" The Lewis character uses not his own arguments but ones borrowed from (an unidentified) Roger Penrose.
• Eliot, T.S. The Cocktail Party. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950. Stephen Medcalf (CW 100, Autumn 2001, p. 45-46) suggests that the Unidentified Guest, a psychiatrist with remarkable human insights, in this play is based on Williams.
• Fleischer, Leonore. Shadowlands. New York: Signet, 1993. Novelization of William Nicholson's screenplay for the film of the same title on the love between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham.
• Harris, Micah (writer) and Gaydos, Michael (artist). Heaven's War. Orange: Image Comics, 2003. Supernatural adventure story in graphic novel form. Williams, bringing Tolkien and Lewis along for the ride, takes part in a secret war between the mystics A.E. Waite and Aleister Crowley.
• Hillard, Steve. Mirkwood. Austin: Cruel Rune, 2010. Reportedly a story of Tolkien as a WW2-era spy, protecting documents telling of heroic female hobbits in ancient Middle-earth. C.S. Lewis also appears.
• Hopkins, Gerard. Nor Fish Nor Flesh. London: Gollancz, 1933. Novel by a colleague of Charles Williams's at the Oxford University Press. A novelist (based on the author) mentors a young painter, Peter Meriden (based on Williams), and becomes his rival in love. The real-life background to this book is discussed concisely in Bernadette Lynn Bosky's introduction to Williams's The Masques of Amen House (Altadena: Mythopoeic Press, 2000), p. 12-16.
• Jeschke, Melanie M. Inklings, Expectations, and Evasions. Eugene: Harvest House, 2002-06. Vols. 1-3 of "The Oxford Chronicles," Christian romance novels. Vols. 1-2 are set among Lewis fans in Oxford in the mid 1960s. Lewis by this time is dead, but Tolkien makes a cameo appearance. Vol. 3 is largely a flashback to a World War II evacuee living with the Lewis brothers in their home, The Kilns. A further sequel, Intentions, apparently not published separately but included in the Harvest House edition of Inklings, is set in Cambridge, but I have not read it and have no further information.
• King, Laurie R. A Letter of Mary. New York: St. Martin's, 1996. Mystery novel with an Inklings cameo, taking place in 1923. The detective, Mary Russell, reports on meeting Tolkien in Oxford (p. 225).
• Kreeft, Peter. Between Heaven and Hell. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1982. Rev. ed., Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008. The shade of C.S. Lewis meets those of John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley - who died on the same day as he - in a featureless limbo, and lectures them on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
• Larkin, Philip. "Michaelmas Term at St. Bride's." In Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions, London: Faber and Faber, 2002. Written 1943 and posthumously published. Oxford campus story including running speculations by the characters as to the authorship of the pseudonymous real-world mystery novel The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin (actually by Larkin's classmate Bruce Montgomery). C.S. Lewis, Nevill Coghill, and Lord David Cecil are among the nominees; Lewis is also proposed as the original of Crispin's professor-detective.
• Lewis, C.S. Out of the Silent Planet. London: Bodley Head, 1938. First of Lewis's Space trilogy. As the hero, Elwin Ransom, is a philologist, as Tolkien was, some have suggested that he is inspired by Tolkien, who recognized some of his ideas expressed by Ransom (Glyer, p. 171).
• Lewis, C.S. Perelandra. London: Bodley Head, 1943. Second of Lewis's Space trilogy. In chapter 2, a cameo reference to a doctor named Humphrey, the nickname of Lewis's own physician and a member of the Inklings, R.E. Havard. Also mentions the anthroposophist "B.," a reference to Owen Barfield.
• Lewis, C.S. That Hideous Strength. London: Bodley Head, 1945. Third of Lewis's Space trilogy. In this Charles Williams-like "spiritual shocker" of a novel, Ransom, as a magnetic spiritual leader, is seen by many as a portrait of Williams himself. The Inkling Gervase Mathew suggests he shows elements of Tolkien and Owen Barfield as well. Cecil Dimble, a don and one of Ransom's followers, resembles Tolkien in his interest and concern for mythology and nature (Glyer, p. 172-73).
• Lewis, C.S. The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader." London: Bles, 1952. Volume 3 (not 5, as incorrectly renumbered) of "The Chronicles of Narnia." There have been suggestions that the "retired star" Ramandu in this children's novel embodies Barfield's ideas of reincarnation (Glyer, p. 201).
• Magrs, Paul. Mad Dogs and Englishmen. London: BBC Publications, 2002. A Dr. Who novel. The Doctor travels to 1940s Cambridge to attend a meeting of "The Smudgelings," highly irreverent caricatures of the Inklings who get caught up in interplanetary intrigue among sinister intelligent dogs.
• Morrow, James. Blameless in Abaddon. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996. Satirical fantasy novel about a man who sues God for allowing evil and pain in the world. God's defense attorney, G.F. Lovett, is a thinly disguised C.S. Lewis. Caustic, but Lovett is allowed to put up a stout defense. Lovett has a brother who is an equally thinly disguised W.H. Lewis.
• Nicholson, D.H.S. The Marriage-Craft. London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1924. Grevel Lindop (p. 14-15) says that Williams is the inspiration for Ronald, a man with unconventional theories about sex and marriage, in this novel. Nicholson was a friend of Williams; if the reference is correct, this is the earliest known example of an Inkling in fiction.
• Norman, Philip. Everyone's Gone to the Moon. New York: Random House, 1995. Autobiographical novel of a journalist who (offstage) interviews Tolkien, as the author once did.
• Owen, James A. "The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica." Six volumes to date, with seven planned in total: Here, There Be Dragons, The Search for the Red Dragon, The Indigo King, The Shadow Dragons, The Dragon's Apprentice, and The Dragons of Winter. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006-10. Over the course of their lives, Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams repeatedly travel into an alternate world of myth and story which feeds their own imaginations. The most extensive Inklings-in-fiction to date. The author was Guest of Honor at Mythcon 40 in 2009.
• Ridpath, Michael. Where the Shadows Lie. London: Corvus, 2010. Murder mystery, set in Iceland, with an Inklings reference. The murder is connected to a lost "ancient manuscript containing a long-lost saga about a ring of terrible power" that is said to have inspired Tolkien.
• Robinson, Robert. Landscape with Dead Dons. London: Gollancz, 1956. Comic murder mystery, set in Oxford, with an Inklings reference. A newly-discovered poem attributed to Chaucer is described as having been evaluated by Chaucer scholars, among whom Coghill and Lewis are named (chapter 9).
• St. Germain, Mark. Freud's Last Session. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2010. Drama, first produced 2009. Two-character play in which C.S. Lewis visits Dr. Freud on the day World War II breaks out, for a discussion of belief and atheism.
• Stewart, J.I.M. Young Pattullo, A Memorial Service, and The Madonna of the Astrolabe. London: Gollancz, 1975-77. Vols. 2-4 of his five-volume "A Staircase in Surrey" sequence of novels. Duncan Pattullo, in vol. 2 a 1940s Oxford undergraduate, in vols. 3-4 a 1970s Oxford don, interacts with various university characters, including, in these three volumes, his Anglo-Saxon tutor, J.B. Timbermill, a fond but eccentric caricature of Tolkien.
• Tayler, R.J., and Shakeshaft, J.R. (as R.J. Tinker and J.R. Crankshaft). "Meeting of the Royal Astrological Society." The Observatory, June 1974. Parody of the proceedings of a scientific meeting, including a report by Professor J.R.R. Talking on astronomical research in Middle-earth.
• Thomsen, Brian M. "Beowulf and the Master of His Critics." In The Further Adventures of Beowulf, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006. Guy Burgess visits Tolkien in 1936 in an attempt to recruit him, as a Beowulf scholar, into a Nazi-sponsored project to promote German culture. Presented as a frame story around new Beowulf-sequel stories by various authors which compose this anthology, purportedly translations of ancient texts Burgess had sent Tolkien.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. London: Allen & Unwin, 1954-55. The voice of Treebeard (who primarily appears in vol. 2, The Two Towers) is said by Humphrey Carpenter to be based on the voice of C.S. Lewis (Glyer, p. 173).
• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Notion Club Papers. In Sauron Defeated, London: HarperCollins, 1992. Incomplete fragmentary novel giving reports on the meetings of a literary club of Oxford dons inspired by the Inklings. Some identifications of the members of the Notion Club with the Inklings are given in a note by the author (described on p. 150-52), and some of these, and some others Tolkien does not identify, match known biographical facts or personality traits of specific Inklings. Discussed briefly by Glyer (p. 185-87).
• Velarde, Robert. Conversations with C.S. Lewis. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008. The shade of C.S. Lewis visits the narrator and takes him on a guided tour through his life, his works, and his religious philosophy. Tolkien, Williams, W.H. Lewis, and Hugo Dyson appear in the Addison's Walk and Inklings meeting (in the pub, not the college) scenes.
• Williams, Donald T. "An Unexpected Meeting." The Lamp-Post, Spring 2005 (published 2007). Vignette. The shades of Lewis and Tolkien visit the author to encourage him in his Inklings II writing group.
• Wilson, A.N. Love Unknown. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986. Contemporary novel with an Inklings reference. In chapter 2, Williams is mentioned as having been a friend of one of the characters, Madge Cruden, during WW2 when she was a publisher and literary hostess.
• Wright, John C. Old Men Shall Dream Dreams. The only (mostly) fictional book on this list: the opening scene was concocted in 2011 to illustrate a point in a writing lesson in John C. Wright's Journal. If the novel existed, it would depict Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams as "secretly involved in a British project to investigate Nazi interest in the occult ... some of the material in their famous books was, of course, a reflection of some real things their work for the government ran into, but were not allowed to reveal due to the Official Secrets Act." The written scene, set during World War II, depicts two fictional characters examining the body of an assassinated hobbit.