(The lack of a rating is simply because I have not read it.)
From the back:
Thursday evenings at Oxford in the '30s: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams--remarkable friends and scholars--met to talk philosophy and read aloud from their works. In that special time and place, their imaginations ran wild, resulting in enchanting fantasies that have captivated millions the world over.
From the preface:
...These three men knew each other well...Around them gathered a group of friends, many of them Oxford dons, who referred to themselves informally and half jestingly as 'The Inklings'...there has been no attempt to write any collective biography of the Inklings. This book tries to fill that gap...I have tried to show the ways in which the ideas and interests of the Inklings contrasted sharply with the general intellectual and literary spirit of the nineteen-twenties and thirties. This has necessitated some discussion of their writings, particularly Lewis's. In this sense the book sometimes strays from 'pure' biography into literary criticism. But I have deliberately avoided making any general judgement of these men's achievement...I have merely tried to tell their story. ~Humphrey Carpenter, 1978
From the back:
Thursday evenings at Oxford in the '30s: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams--remarkable friends and scholars--met to talk philosophy and read aloud from their works. In that special time and place, their imaginations ran wild, resulting in enchanting fantasies that have captivated millions the world over.
From the preface:
...These three men knew each other well...Around them gathered a group of friends, many of them Oxford dons, who referred to themselves informally and half jestingly as 'The Inklings'...there has been no attempt to write any collective biography of the Inklings. This book tries to fill that gap...I have tried to show the ways in which the ideas and interests of the Inklings contrasted sharply with the general intellectual and literary spirit of the nineteen-twenties and thirties. This has necessitated some discussion of their writings, particularly Lewis's. In this sense the book sometimes strays from 'pure' biography into literary criticism. But I have deliberately avoided making any general judgement of these men's achievement...I have merely tried to tell their story. ~Humphrey Carpenter, 1978
