I’m pleased to be a part of the team that created this innovative book, The Inklings and King Arthur, edited by the intrepid Sørina Higgins. Most people wouldn’t know that academic books are a labour of love. They don’t make any money for the authors, and not a tremendous amount for the publishers (who rely on superstar academics and textbook sales to support the important works that only sell a handful of copies). When we do archival and recent history and literature, there can be additional costs. Here is your chance now to contribute in a small way to this important work on how the Arthurian tales were taken up and reused in J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and their friends.
Dear readers of The Oddest Inkling:
As you know, in 2013, a previously-unpublished work by J.R.R. Tolkien appeared: The Fall of Arthur, his only explicitly Arthurian writing. The publication of this extraordinary poem revealed subtle connections between “The Matter of Britain” and the rest of JRRT’s legendarium, and thus invited an examination of the theological, literary, historical, and linguistic implications of the Arthurian writings of all the major Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield. It became immediately obvious that a scholarly study of these works was necessary.
The book I have been editing for four years, The Inklings and King Arthur, fills that gap. It is an edited essay collection that examines the Arthurian works of Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, Barfield, their predecessors, and their contemporaries. It offers exciting, rigorous analytical perspectives on a wide range of the Inklings’ Arthurian and related works, contributing…
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A Pilgrim in Narnia 