MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
A group biography by Humphrey Carpenter, the author of Tolkien's authorised biography. Its full title is The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and their Friends.
The Inklings were a circle of Oxford friends who met in the 1930s and 1940s to read their work aloud, in Lewis's rooms at Magdalen College and at the Eagle and Child pub. Carpenter tells how the group formed around Lewis, how Tolkien read chapters of The Lord of the Rings to it, and how the friendships changed over the years. The book was first published by George Allen & Unwin in 1978 and won the Somerset Maugham Award.
The story of the Oxford circle of friends where Tolkien read The Lord of the Rings aloud to C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams.