Journal of Inklings Studies

31/10/2025

We are happy to share an invitation for an upcoming symposium on Owen Barfield with our readers:

"Poetic Imagination and the Rediscovery of Meaning
A symposium celebrating the life and ideas of Owen Barfield"

The afternoon explores meaning and imagination, the two great themes of philosopher-poet Owen Barfield, the thinker who inspired C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and T.S. Eliot.

📅 Sunday, 9 November 2025
🕝 2:30 PM – 6:00 PM
📍 Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road, London NW1 6XT

Sunday 9 November 2.30pm – 6pm A Symposium Celebrating Owen Barfield Meaning and imagination are two intertwined themes throughout the writing career of philosopher and poet […]

20/10/2025

Carl Hostetter, one of the world's leading experts on Tolkien's handwriting, kindly provided some corrections to John Garth's transcription of Tolkien's MS B, folio 75v, that was recently published in his article about Tolkien's 1939 lecture, "On Fairy-Stories" (JIS 15/2, p. 243). John agrees with all of Carl's suggestions (which aren't relevant to the argument in his essay) and asked us to share them with our readers.

18/10/2025

The JIS is happy to announce that our October issue (Vol. 15/2) has just been published by Edinburgh UP.
The "featured article" of this volume is "Revealed: Tolkien's 1939 Lecture on Fairy-stories" by John Garth; it can be downloaded for free on our website at EUP: https://www.euppublishing.com/toc/ink/current
Arend Smilde presents in his essay Ashley Sampson as the "Discoverer of C. S. Lewis". A voluminous appendix with further material on Sampson and Lewis can be found (and downloaded for free) on his website: https://lewisiana.nl/sampson-appendix/

03/07/2025

We somehow missed announcing the publication of No 3 of our "Inklings Studies Supplement" series last year, "Tolkien and the Relation between Sub-creation and Reality" (ed. Giuseppe Pezzini and Eden O’Brien).

The volume collects papers presented at a conference in Rimini, Italy, in 2021, in conjunction with a major Tolkien exhibition. The general theme is the relationship between fiction and reality, or between 'secondary' (sub-created) and 'primary' (created) worlds.

Printed copies of the volume can be ordered here:
https://inklings-studies.org/about/supplements/

25/06/2025

The Journal of Inklings Studies is happy to share the following invitation of the Inklings Project with its readers:

The Inklings Project is an initiative that aims to help college and university faculty create and teach their own Inklings-related courses, especially courses that focus on the works of C. S. Lewis and/or J. R. R. Tolkien.

Under the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute, the Inklings Project is requesting applications from faculty at universities and colleges for our fellowship program. Each awardee will be named an Inklings Project Fellow for the AY25-26 academic year and, among other benefits, receive a grant in the amount of $1,500 for creating and teaching an Inklings-related course.

Applications are due July 8th. You can read more about the Inklings Project Fellowship and application requirements in the Call for Proposals found at www.inklingsproject.org/apply.

Last year the Inklings Project had thirteen outstanding fellows from across the world who taught Inklings courses in their various departments to a wide range of student audiences. You can read more about our fellows’ courses and Inklings-related endeavours in the Inklings Quarterly, the Inklings Project’s official newsletter.

03/06/2025

The JIS is delighted to announce the publication of two studies by members of our editorial board: Judith Wolfe's "The Theological Imagination" and Giuseppe Pezzini's "Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation", both published by Cambridge University Press:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/theological-imagination/41F28FB1A7782804FD05C25FB0F8036F
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/tolkien-and-the-mystery-of-literary-creation/8D349413EC68A7CB1D651BD1CC104060

People who purchase their copy of Judith's book before 30 June 2025 via www.cambridge.org/9781009519861 will receive a discuont of 30% by entering the code SST2025 at the checkout.

More information about Guiseppe's book can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezq6swzPcEM&ab_channel=CambridgeUniversityPress

08/05/2025

We are extremely proud to announce the publication of Inklings Studies Supplement No 4 "C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist" by Justin Keena.
This groundbreaking study of the blurbs that Lewis wrote for his own books and those of others is now available via our website:
https://inklings-studies.org/buy/c-s-lewis-blurbologist/
In the first three months, buyers benefit from a 15% discount (£15.30 instead of £18.00).

28/04/2025

We apologise for the long silence on this channel: There was a change in the Journal's managing editor from Derek Keefe to Norbert Feinendegen last year, and there were some technical issues with posting new content.
But now we are happy to announce that Volume 15/1 of the Journal has just been published; it contains five outstanding articles on Lewis and Tolkien and a dozen book reviews. The featured article by Patrick Timmis and the book reviews can be downloaded for free on the Journal's page at Edinburgh UP: https://euppublishing.com/toc/ink/15/1.