† George Stuart Gordon (1881–1942) was the first Fellow of English in Magdalen College. After serving as Professor of English in the University of Leeds, 1913–22, he returned to Oxford as Merton Professor of English, 1922–8. He was President of Magdalen College, 1928–42, and Professor of Poetry, 1933–8.
* i.e. Spirits in Bondage.
* ‘In those days,’ Lewis wrote in the preface to the 1950 edition of Dymer, ‘the new psychology was just beginning to make itself felt in the circles I most frequented at Oxford. This joined forces with the fact that we felt ourselves (as young men always do) to be escaping from the illusions of adolescence, and as a result we were much exercised about the problem of fantasy or wishful thinking. The “Christina Dream”, as we called it, after Christina Pontifex in Butler’s novel [The Way of All Flesh (1903)], was the hidden enemy whom we were all determined to unmask and defeat’ (p. xi).
† Leo Kingsley Baker (1898–1986) was born in London. He served in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, after which he came up to Wadham College in 1919 and read Modern Languages. He and Lewis shared a love for poetry, and he introduced Lewis to Owen Barfield. After taking his BA in 1923, he became an actor with the Old Vic Company. In 1925 he married Eileen Brookes and they set up a handloom weaving business, Kingsley Weavers, in Chipping Campden. Baker had meanwhile become an Anthroposophist, and after their business was dissolved during the Second World War he taught in a Rudolf Steiner school. He was Drama Adviser for Gloucestershire, 1942–6, and National Drama Adviser for the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 1946–63. See his biography in CG.
* Acrasia is the witch-maiden in Edmund Spenser’s ‘Bower of Bliss’ in The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).
* Alfred Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin (1900–80) was born in Redruth, Cornwall. He matriculated at University College in 1919 and read English. He and Lewis met at that time and were members of the Martlets. After taking a BA in 1922, Jenkin wrote a B.Litt. thesis on Richard Carew. On leaving Oxford he returned to Cornwall where he became a very popular and highly respected author and broadcaster. His many books include The Cornish Miner (1927), Cornish Seafarers (1932) and The Story of Cornwall (1934). See his biography in CG.
† Eric Robertson Dodds (1893–1979) was born in Co. Down and educated at Campbell College, Belfast. He read Classics at University College, taking his BA in 1917. He was lecturer in Classics at University College, Reading, 1919–24, Professor of Greek at the University of Birmingham, 1924–36, and Professor of Greek at Oxford, 1936–60. See his autobiography, Missing Persons (1977).
* Nevill Coghill (1899–1980), an Inkling, was born in Co. Cork. He served with the Royal Artillery during the war, after which he came up to Exeter College, Oxford. He read History and then English. After teaching for a while at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, he was elected Fellow of English at Exeter College in 1925. He was Merton Professor of English, 1957–66. Coghill produced many plays for the Oxford University Dramatic Society. However, it is as the translator of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1951) and Troilus and Criseyde (1971) that he was without peer. See his biography in CG.
† Henry Victor Dyson ‘Hugo’ Dyson (1896–1975), an Inkling, was born in Hove. After leaving the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, he served in the Queen’s Own Royal Military Kent Regiment in 1915–18. He read English at Exeter College, after which he taught English at Reading University, 1924–45. He came to know Lewis in 1930 through Nevill Coghill, and he and Tolkien played a vital part in Lewis’s conversion the following year. He became the Fellow of English at Merton College in 1945. See his biography in CG.
† John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) was born in South Africa to English parents, but from 1895 was raised in Birmingham. His mother became a Catholic in 1900 and from that point on Ronald and his brother Hilary were raised as Catholics. In 1902 Ronald became a pupil at St Philip’s School. He went up to Exeter College, Oxford in 1911 and read Honour Moderations, and then English, gaining a First in 1915. He served with the Lancashire Fusiliers 1915–18, having meanwhile married Edith Mary Bratt in 1916. They were to have four children. After being demobilized, Tolkien returned to Oxford and worked on the Oxford Dictionary. He was Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Leeds, 1924, and in 1925 returned to Oxford as Professor of Anglo-Saxon. He was elected Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945. Tolkien met Lewis in 1926, and in 1929 they began weekly meetings to read one another their compositions. They were the original Inklings’. Tolkien’s writings about ‘Middle Earth’ resulted in the publication of The Hobbit (1937) and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1955) and The Return of the King (1955). See Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977) and The Inklings (1978).
* Edith Elizabeth Wardale (1863–1943) entered Lady Margaret Hall in 1887, but moved a year later to the recently opened St Hugh’s College. After taking a First in Modern Languages she became Vice-Principal and Tutor of St Hugh’s College. She was intimately connected to women’s education during some of the most important years of its history. She remained at St Hugh’s until her retirement in 1923.
* Strickland Gibson (1877–1958) was from Oxford and was educated at St Catherine’s College. After taking his degree he was Assistant to Bodley’s Librarian, 1895–1912, Secretary to Bodley’s Librarian, 1912–31, and sub-librarian, 1931–45. Besides being Keeper of the University Archives, 1927–45, he was a Lecturer in Bibliography for the English Faculty, 1923–45. He published a number of historical and bibliographical articles.
† Charles Talbut Onions (1873–1965) was a distinguished lexicographer and grammarian. After taking a degree from the University of Birmingham in 1892 he published An Advanced English Syntax (1904). In 1895 he was invited to join the staff of the Oxford Dictionary at Oxford where he remained for the rest of his life. He was appointed a Fellow of Magdalen College in 1923. Besides his work on the Dictionary, he was a lecturer in English, 1920–7, and Reader in English Philology, 1927–49. See J.A.W. Bennett’s biography of him in the Dictionary of National Biography.
† Professor Sir Walter Raleigh (1861–1922), who was educated at University College, Oxford, became the first holder of the Chair of English Literature at Oxford in 1904. In 1914 he was made Merton Professor of English. His contribution to the study of English at Oxford was enormous, and his lectures aroused great enthusiasm.
§ David Nichol Smith (1875–1962)