The Oxford Circle

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"Before Narnia ever existed, C.S. Lewis had a secret weapon: a band of Oxford friends who argued, challenged, and inspired him—the Inklings."

Think C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia all by himself? Think again. Lewis was part of the Inklings, a group of Oxford professors, writers, and thinkers who met to read aloud, debate, and challenge one another.

When we think of CS Lewis today, we often picture The Chronicles of Narnia, or his rational, graceful Christian apologetics. But to really understand him, we need to see him inside a unique circle of writers and thinkers: the Inklings—a group that met in Oxford in the 1930s and ’40s to read aloud, critique, and sometimes spar over each other’s works.

In fact, I was aware that C.S. Lewis was an extremely influential modern writer when I began this episode and intended to write it just about Lewis, but came to quickly realize that he was only a part of the “creative puzzle.

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