As one would expect, Owen Barfield, Neville Coghill, and Hugo Dyson all make appearances. Later in the book he does seem to re-center his writing, and there are details on the developing careers of each of the main thee men, and how this changed the dynamics between Inklings in later years.

I was a little confused by how often Carpenter turned back to Charles Williams after that, as if the man were a mystery he wanted to unpack. This pretend conversation was quite good, in that it felt authentic and contained a lot of interesting content. We’ll never know exactly what these men said, as there’s no real transcripts. Then in the middle there’s a description of a foe Inklings meeting, in that the author puts together a sample of what he thinks an Inklings meeting could have been like (based on what he knows these men talked about), but it didn’t actually happen. If I were studying Tolkien or any of the other Inklings, I would be disappointed in the lack of detail about any of the other men.įirst there’s small bios of Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams. But there’s certainly room for more detailed scholarship on the Inklings, as this book left open quite a few gaps. The author admits this early on, and I was prepared for it. But it’s half an Inklings discussion, and half a biography of C. He does talk about the other men (for example, there were also some interesting details about Warnie and John Wain that I hadn’t seen before). Overall, it’s worth reading if you are studying Lewis.

Humphrey carpenter the inklings