Why we can thank C.S. Lewis for “The Hobbit”

Two great authors

At Oxford, Tolkien convinced a fellow professor, an avowed atheist to accept Christianity. That friend, C.S. Lewis, went on to author such Christian classics as the bestselling Mere Christianity, Pilgrim’s Regress, Miracles, The Screwtape Letters and The Problem of Pain – as well as the beloved children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia. The two remained close friends for life and were active in an informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings," which included authors Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and Dorothy Sayers."Properly speaking," wrote member 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." Instead, they read aloud their works in progress. It was this group that first heard Tolkien’s English mythological creations.

Two great authors

On the famed Lewis’s recommendation, The Hobbit then became a bestseller. Tolkien’s publishers asked him to write a sequel. He promptly delivered to them his decades of invented English mythology, the penciled notebooks which he called The Silmarillion. The publishers were just as puzzled as had been the Inklings. They gently recommended he write something more about hobbits. More than a decade later, Tolkien finally delivered his trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, which takes place within the fanciful world of The Silmarillion, but focuses on the great quest of hobbit Frodo Baggins – who inherited a certain magic ring from his uncle, Bilbo Baggins, the hero of The Hobbit.