Chapter 6
The Inklings
In early 1926, Ronald was working at his new post as a professor at Oxford. There, Ronald met another young professor. His name was Clive Staples (C. S.) Lewis, but everyone called him Jack. Jack loved ancient myths as much as Ronald did. Growing up, he and his brother, Warnie, who also lived in Oxford, had created their own imaginary world. Jack wanted to hear more about Ronald’s imaginary world. What did he call it? Ronald named his world Middle- earth.
Edith was not as happy at Oxford as Ronald. She spent her time at home with her three sons and a daughter, Priscilla, born in 1929. Edith didn’t get along with the wives of the Oxford professors. She felt like they were all more educated than she was. It made her sad when Ronald spent his spare time with friends, rather than his family.
Ronald and Jack had started meeting with some other friends twice a week. They called themselves the Inklings. When they got together, they shared the stories and poems they were writing.
Around 1930, Ronald started writing a new story. It was set in Middle-earth. But instead of being a story about romantic elven warriors and princesses, it was about a hobbit. He was named Bilbo Baggins. Like all hobbits, he was small and never traveled far from home. He lived in a hobbit-hole under a hill called Bag End—named after the farm where Ronald’s aunt Jane now lived. One day Bilbo was visited by a wizard named Gandalf. Gandalf had a long white beard, a tall, pointed hat, and a long cloak, just like the man on the postcard Ronald had found in Switzerland.
Ronald’s children loved hearing about Bilbo’s adventures. So did some of his Oxford students. So did the Inklings, especially Jack.
Ronald and Jack had a lot in common. But there was one thing about Jack that Ronald couldn’t understand. He wasn’t a Christian. He believed in God, but not the stories of the Bible. Ronald couldn’t understand how his friend could doubt anything in the Bible. One night after a meeting, Ronald and Jack took a walk with another Inkling, Hugo Dyson.
Ronald and Hugo told Jack that to them the story of Christianity was just as amazing as the Icelandic sagas they loved. But it was a true story. For the first time, Jack understood what Christianity meant to Ronald. Soon after their talk, he converted to the Church of England.
By 1932, Ronald had almost finished The Hobbit. For years it sat in a drawer. What Ronald didn’t know was that a former student of his, who now worked for a book publisher, was talking about The Hobbit. Her name was Elaine Griffiths. Years earlier she had read her professor’s unfinished story. She couldn’t forget it. Elaine decided to show The Hobbit to her bosses at the publishing house. She had no idea that she was opening the door to a whole new world.