Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings

by Diana Pavlac Glyer

All of the Inklings encouraged one another, but Charles Williams seems to have been uniquely gifted at it. Williams’s biographer, Alice Mary Hadfield, explains that Williams had this effect on everyone he met, whether a stranger at a bus stop or an old, familiar friend. She summarizes his impact as follows: “C. W. could make each one seem important and interesting, a vital gift to most of us, but even more than that, he could make life important and interesting, not some life removed from us by money, opportunity or gifts, but the very life we had to lead and should probably go on leading for years.” W. H. Auden highlights this when he says, “In his company one felt twice as intelligent and infinitely nicer than, out of it, one knew oneself to be.”

Goals