Bookish Diversions: Lewis and Tolkien, Pen Pals

Their Creative Fellowship, New Explorations, New Discoveries, New Projects, More

¶ Pen pals. Does it strike anyone as strange that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien both lost their mothers when young? Lewis was just nine, Tolkien twelve. It’s at least curious—especially when you add other coincidences: Both men were injured in the Great War; both also loved the philological, mythological, and medieval. Stranger still, the pair ended up …