pub, formerly the landlord's sitting-room where Lewis's friends, including Inklings members, informally gathered on Tuesday mornings. There is a small display of
memorabilia. "Properly speaking," wrote Warren Lewis, "the Inklings was neither a club nor a
literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections." As was typical for university groups in their time and place, the Inklings were all male. Readings and discussions of the members' unfinished works were the principal purposes of meetings. Tolkien's
The Lord of the Rings, Lewis's
Out of the Silent Planet, and Williams's ''
All Hallows' Eve'' were among the novels first read to the Inklings. Tolkien's fictional
Notion Club (see "
Sauron Defeated") was based on the Inklings. Meetings were not all serious; the Inklings amused themselves by having competitions to see who could read the notoriously bad prose of
Amanda McKittrick Ros for the longest without laughing. The name was associated originally with a society of
Oxford University's
University College, initiated by the then undergraduate
Edward Tangye Lean around 1931, for the purpose of reading aloud unfinished compositions. The society consisted of students and dons, among them Tolkien and Lewis. When Lean left Oxford in 1933, the society ended, and Tolkien and Lewis transferred its name to their group at
Magdalen College. On the association between the two 'Inklings' societies, Tolkien later said "although our habit was to read aloud compositions of various kinds (and lengths!), this association and its habit would in fact have come into being at that time, whether the original short-lived club had ever existed or not." Until late 1949, Inklings readings and discussions were usually held on Thursday evenings in C. S. Lewis's rooms at Magdalen. The Inklings and friends also gathered informally on Tuesdays at midday at a local
public house,
The Eagle and Child, familiarly and alliteratively known in the Oxford community as The Bird and Baby, or simply The Bird. The publican, Charlie Blagrove, let Lewis and friends use his private parlour for privacy; the wall and door separating it from the public bar were removed in 1962. During the war years, beer shortages occasionally rendered the Eagle and Child unable to open and the group instead met at other pubs, including the White Horse and the Kings Arms. == Legacy ==