By the mid 1930s, he had written his first significant piece of scholarship, “A Note on Comus,” as well as Allegory of Love, but after his conversation on Christianity in September and October of 1931, he had also begun to write Christian apologetics in a variety of forms.

Lewis, however, held the much less prestigious position of “Fellow” at Magdalen College, Oxford, but his writing career was at nearly the same stage as Tolkien’s. He also held one of the most prestigious chairs in all of the University of Oxford, the Merton Chair at Merton College. Tolkien had already written but had not published The Hobbit, and he would soon write, if he had not already, his most famous academic essays on Beowulf and on faerie stories. Though Tolkien did not record the exact date of this conversation, it almost certainly happened sometime in the mid-1930s, and, as Christopher Tolkien has argued, probably in 1936. I am afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves.” “There is too little of what we really like in stories. Lewis declared, using one of the many names-nicked as well as given-of his good friend, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. After a “toss up,” the two men agreed that Lewis’ stories would deal with space travel while Tolkien’s would deal with time travel.

Lewis challenged each other to create deep works of the imagination. Hoping to prove successful in combining a love of things old with mythology and with a desire to uphold the dignity of the human person in a world rent asunder by warring ideologies, J.R.R.

Lewis space trilogy