The Inklings in Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography

compiled by David Bratman

This bibliography was originally the reading list for a paper on "The Inklings in Fiction" that I gave at Mythcon 40 (Los Angeles, 2009). An earlier version was published in the January 2010 issue of Mythprint, the monthly bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society.

By "The Inklings in Fiction" I mean depictions of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and their friends and colleagues as characters in stories or novels. These come in three forms:

1. Characters who are, or purport to be, the Inklings themselves, usually as heroes of fantasy adventures or making tiny cameo appearances in stories with historical settings;
2. Romans à clef, that is, stories whose characters are the Inklings with the names and some identifying details changed;
3. Characters who are not supposed to be the Inklings, but whose personalities or character are, or are claimed to be, directly based on them.

Relevant fiction by the Inklings themselves (Tolkien, Lewis, and Barfield) is covered in two articles by Diana Pavlac Glyer: Chapter 7 of The Company They Keep (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2007), and "Lewis in Disguise: Portraits of Jack in the Fiction of His Friends" (in C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering Hidden Truth, ed. Salwa Khoddam and Mark R. Hall [Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2012], 34-54), to which reference is made below. However, self-portraits in works by the Inklings themselves are not covered here, as an author's personality may be found embedded in all his works.

Thanks to those who have contributed items or otherwise helped with this list: Joe R. Christopher, Diana Pavlac Glyer, Janet Brennan Croft, Jason Fisher, John D. Rateliff, Wendell Wagner, Sherwood Smith, Brenda Clough, Donald T. Williams, Ginger McElwee, William H. Stoddard, Valerie Estelle Frankel, Morgan Thomsen, Raymond Edwards, Kel Richards, Janet Lafler, Richard West, Kevin J. Boris, Gareth Hanrahan, Douglas A. Anderson.

New accounts of the Inklings in fiction are published frequently. Let me know of any you have found.

Prose Fiction

• Allingham, Margery. More Work for the Undertaker. London: Heinemann, 1949. Eric Routley (The Puritan Pleasures of the Detective Story [London: Gollancz, 1972], p. 151) suggests that Inspector Charles Luke in this mystery novel is based on Williams.
• Barfield, Owen. "Night Operation." Originally serialized 1983-84; reprinted in A Barfield Sampler (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993) and separately (U.K.: Barfield Press, 2008). Dystopian science fiction story featuring characters, Jon and Jak, whose relationship of friendship through opposition resembles that of Barfield and Lewis (Glyer Company, p. 173-74; "Disguise," p. 41-44).
• Barfield, Owen. This Ever Diverse Pair. Originally published as by G.A.L. Burgeon. London: Gollancz, 1950. Thinly fictionalized account of the author's life as a lawyer. Chapter 6 recounts his dealings with the tax problems of a client's authorial royalties. Apart from the client's name, Ramsden, this is apparently a straightforward factual account of a matter involving C.S. Lewis (Glyer Company, p. 175-76; "Disguise," p. 45-48).
• Barfield, Owen. Worlds Apart. London: Faber, 1963. Novel in the form of a transcript of a long philosophical discussion among several characters. Hunter, a theologian and ethicist, represents C.S. Lewis (Glyer Company, p. 174-75; "Disguise," p. 44-45).
• Briarton, Grendel [pseud. of Reginald Bretnor]. "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot: LXIII." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1963, p. 102. Reprinted in The Collected Feghoot (Eugene, OR: Pulphouse, 1992), p. 100, as "Feghoot 61." Vignette in which time- and space-spanning punster Ferdinand Feghoot introduces Tolkien to hobbits by making the obvious pun.
• Callahan, Patti. Becoming Mrs. Lewis, a novel: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2018. Historical romance novel about the stated subject.
• Callahan, Patti. Once Upon a Wardrobe. Nashville, TN: Harper Muse, 2021. Young Oxford student receives lessons in the use of the imagination from C.S. Lewis when she queries him about the inspirations for Narnia.
• Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. This literary group biography is non-fiction, but includes a chapter (Part 3, chapter 3) reconstructing the conversation at an imaginary typical Inklings meeting, with C.S. and W.H. Lewis, Tolkien, Williams, and R.E. Havard in attendance.
• Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Equivalently to The Inklings, but without dialogue, this biography illustrates its subject with a chapter (Part 4, chapter 1) describing an imaginary but typical day in his life from the early 1930s. This is before the Inklings, but Lewis and the other future Inklings R.B. McCallum and Nevill Coghill are mentioned.
• Chase, Robert R. The Game of Fox and Lion. New York: Del Rey, 1986. Science fiction novel with an Inklings allusion. Future interstellar civilization has a Catholic church with a stained-glass window showing "Saints Clive, Jacob, and Charles ... dressed in tweeds as they sat around the fire in a study, reading manuscripts aloud to one another" (chapter 8, p. 111).
• Christie, Agatha. "Harlequin's Lane." In The Mysterious Mr. Quin. London: Collins, 1930. Grevel Lindop (Charles Williams and His Contemporaries, ed. Bray & Sturch [Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2009], p. 14) finds a critical portrait of Williams in the composer Claude Wickham of this story, and a parallel to Descent into Hell's play rehearsal in the story's opera-rehearsal plot.
• Clough, Brenda W. "Escape Hatch." Paradox 3, Autumn 2003. Reprinted in Book View Cafe. Short story in which C.S. Lewis, in the trenches in World War I, has a glimpse of Faerie and is introduced to Tolkien through the unlikely offices of James Joyce.
• Crispin, Edmund. The Case of the Gilded Fly. London: Gollancz, 1944. John Heath-Stubbs (Inklings Jahrbuch 5 [1987], p. 68) and Grevel Lindop (2009, p. 13) suggest that the playwright Robert Warner in this mystery novel is based on Williams. (Probably less seriously, a character in Philip Larkin's "Michaelmas Term at St. Bride's" [q.v.] claims that the detective, Gervase Fen, an English professor at Oxford, is a "horribly malicious ... caricature of [C.S.] Lewis.")
• Crispin, Edmund. Swan Song. London: Gollancz, 1947. Mystery novel with an Inklings cameo. In chapter 8 the detective sits in the Bird and Baby and notes C.S. Lewis walking by; "it must be Tuesday." Notable as a contemporary reference, made while the Inklings were still meeting there.
• Dexter, Colin. The Secret of Annexe 3. New York: St. Martin's, 1986. Mystery novel with an Inklings reference: the detectives sit in the Bird and Baby and read the Inklings plaque (p. 71).
• Doran, T.M. Toward the Gleam. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011. "Secret history" novel about a professor in England, never named as but obviously identical to Tolkien, who finds a manuscript revealing an unknown ancient civilization, evidently the basis of his entire legendarium. He is plunged into adventures trying to protect it from an evil conspiracy. His wife and children are characters, as are two friends he meets in the Bird and Baby who are transparently Barfield and C.S. Lewis.
• Dorman, S[usan C]. Fantastic Travelogue. Greenwood, ME: Dormannheim, 2009. Cover subtitle is "Mark Twain and C.S. Lewis Talk Things over in the Hereafter." Kepler and George MacDonald also appear. Began as a 2002 English thesis using this dialogue format to compare Twain's works with Lewis's Till We Have Faces.
• Downing, David C. Looking for the King. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010. "Secret history" adventure novel by a Lewis scholar. Lewis, Williams, and Tolkien become mentors and information sources for two young Americans looking for Arthurian artifacts around England in 1940. Other Inklings (Havard and Hugo Dyson) appear in a scene set at an Inklings pub meeting.
• Egan, Greg. "Oracle." Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 2000. Reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Eighteenth Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois (New York: St. Martin's/Griffin, 2001), and in Year's Best SF 6, ed. David G. Hartwell (New York: Eos, 2001). Science fiction story about a debate between characters identical to Alan Turing and C.S. Lewis on the question, "Can Machines Think?" The Lewis character uses not his own arguments but ones borrowed from (an unidentified) Roger Penrose.
• Eisenberg, Joel, and Hillard, Stephen. The Chronicles of Ara (Incorgnito Books, 2015-). Said to be an 8-volume fantasy saga, following on Hillard's earlier novel Mirkwood (see below), beginning with the "discovery of a missing book of Beowulf, authenticated by J.R.R. Tolkien and a team of academics." Apparently will also include flashback scenes of Tolkien and other "darker fantasists" being inspired by a "corrupted muse" implanting "a series of codes" in their fiction. Vol. 1 is titled Creation.
• Fleischer, Leonore. Shadowlands. New York: Signet, 1993. Novelization of William Nicholson's screenplay for the film of the same title on the love between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham.
• Glyer, Diana Pavlac. "Lewis in Disguise: Portraits of Jack in the Fiction of His Friends." In C.S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering Hidden Truths, ed. Salwa Khoddam and Mark R. Hall, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012. This scholarly article on works of Tolkien and Barfield (cited here) begins with a reconstruction of the conversation between Lewis and Tolkien which set them to writing Out of the Silent Planet and The Lost Road respectively.
• Harvard Lampoon. The Wobbit: A Parody. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013. "J.R.R. Toking" and "C.S. Losing", among other authors, appear briefly at the end of this Hobbit parody to object to appropriations of their work.
• Hillard, Steve. Mirkwood. Austin: Cruel Rune, 2010. Reportedly a story of Tolkien as a WW2-era spy, protecting documents telling of heroic female hobbits in ancient Middle-earth. C.S. Lewis also appears.
• Hopkins, Gerard. Nor Fish Nor Flesh. London: Gollancz, 1933. Novel by a colleague of Charles Williams's at the Oxford University Press. A novelist (based on the author) mentors a young painter, Peter Meriden (based on Williams), and becomes his rival in love. The real-life background to this book is discussed concisely in Bernadette Lynn Bosky's introduction to Williams's The Masques of Amen House (Altadena: Mythopoeic Press, 2000), p. 12-16; the plot is very briefly summarized in Grevel Lindop, Charles Williams: The Third Inkling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 204-5.
• Irwin, Robert. The Runes Have Been Cast. Sawtry: Dedalus, 2021. Academic comedy with passing Inklings references. Tolkien makes a cameo appearance in a scene set at a Merton dons' dinner in 1962; a character reports having attended an Inklings' pub meeting after the war; Tolkien, Lewis, and Coghill are also mentioned elsewhere.
• Jeschke, Melanie M. Inklings, Expectations, and Evasions. Eugene: Harvest House, 2004-06. Vols. 1-3 of "The Oxford Chronicles," a chronological sequence of Christian romance novels set among Lewis fans in Oxford in the mid 1960s. Lewis by this time is dead, though some of the characters knew him and give memories in the form of canned lectures, and Tolkien and his wife make cameo appearances onstage. Vol. 3 is largely a flashback account of a World War II evacuee living with the Lewis brothers in their home, The Kilns. The first half only of Vol. 1 was originally published in 2002 (Fairfax, VA: Xulon Press); the Harvest House edition organizes the book as "Part 1, Inklings" and "Part 2, Intentions."
• Kang, Chang-Wuk. The Last Journey of Jack Lewis: A Conversation of C.S. Lewis with Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud. Bloomington, IN: WestBow Press, 2013. Stuck in a posthumous limbo, Lewis, "Fred" Nietzsche, and "Sig" Freud discuss spiritual beliefs at length. Frequent references to other Inklings, particularly "J.R.R." as if that were Tolkien's use-name.
• Kearney, Paul. The Wolf in the Attic. Oxford: Solaris, 2016. Greek refugee girl, in Oxford in the 1920s, meets Lewis and Tolkien.
• King, Laurie R. A Letter of Mary. New York: St. Martin's, 1996. Mystery novel with an Inklings cameo, taking place in 1923. The detective, Mary Russell, reports on meeting Tolkien in Oxford (p. 225).
• Kowal, Mary Robinette. Ghost Talkers. New York: Tor, 2016. Fantasy novel set among a women's spiritualist corps in the WW1 British Army. Scenes at the Battle of the Somme include cameo appearances by a signals officer, Lt. Tolkien (ch. 15 & 16).
• Kreeft, Peter. Between Heaven and Hell. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1982. Rev. ed., Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008. The shade of C.S. Lewis meets those of John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley - who died on the same day as he - in a featureless limbo, and lectures them on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
• Kreeft, Peter. The Journey: A Spiritual Roadmap for Modern Pilgrims. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996. Pilgrim's Progress-style spiritual journey, in which C.S. Lewis is the last (and the only modern) of the pilgrim's guides, expounding his "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" trilemma.
• LePore, James, and Carlos Davis. No Dawn for Men, God's Formula, and The Bone Keepers. Stamford, CT: Story Plant, 2013-16. Vols. 1-3 of "The Mythmakers Trilogy," in which Tolkien and Ian Fleming are vigorously fictionalized as colleagues in espionage. In the first book, Tolkien is sent to Nazi Germany in 1938, using negotiations to publish The Hobbit in German as a cover. (Apparently the authors are under the false impression that he actually went.) Vols. 2-3 pursue other adventures as far as 1943.
• Larkin, Philip. "Michaelmas Term at St. Bride's." In Trouble at Willow Gables and Other Fictions, London: Faber and Faber, 2002. Written 1943 and posthumously published. Oxford campus story including running speculations by the characters as to the authorship of the pseudonymous real-world mystery novel The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin (actually by Larkin's classmate Bruce Montgomery). C.S. Lewis, Nevill Coghill, and Lord David Cecil are among the nominees; Lewis is also proposed as the original of Crispin's professor-detective.
• Lewis, C.S. Out of the Silent Planet. London: Bodley Head, 1938. First of Lewis's Space trilogy. As the hero, Elwin Ransom, is a philologist, as Tolkien was, some have suggested that he is inspired by Tolkien, who recognized some of his ideas expressed by Ransom (Glyer Company, p. 171, and "Disguise," p. 49).
• Lewis, C.S. Perelandra. London: Bodley Head, 1943. Second of Lewis's Space trilogy. In chapter 2, a cameo reference to a doctor named Humphrey, the nickname of Lewis's own physician and a member of the Inklings, R.E. Havard. Also mentions the anthroposophist "B.," a reference to Owen Barfield.
• Lewis, C.S. The Pilgrim's Regress. London: Dent, 1933. The figure of History in this allegory is partly inspired by Barfield (Glyer, "Disguise," p. 41).
• Lewis, C.S. That Hideous Strength. London: Bodley Head, 1945. Third of Lewis's Space trilogy. In this Charles Williams-like "spiritual shocker" of a novel, Ransom, as a magnetic spiritual leader, is seen by many as a portrait of Williams himself. The Inkling Gervase Mathew suggests he shows elements of Tolkien and Owen Barfield as well. Cecil Dimble, a don and one of Ransom's followers, resembles Tolkien in his interest and concern for mythology and nature (Glyer Company, p. 172-73).
• Lewis, C.S. The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader." London: Bles, 1952. Volume 3 (not 5, as incorrectly renumbered) of "The Chronicles of Narnia." There have been suggestions that the "retired star" Ramandu in this children's novel embodies Barfield's ideas of reincarnation (Glyer Company, p. 201; "Disguise," p. 41).
• Magrs, Paul. Mad Dogs and Englishmen. London: BBC Publications, 2002. A Dr. Who novel. The Doctor travels to 1940s Cambridge to attend a meeting of "The Smudgelings," highly irreverent caricatures of the Inklings who get caught up in interplanetary intrigue among sinister intelligent dogs.
• Moriwen. Mysterious Gibberish with Elves: The Collected Works. 2014. Available online at Archive of Our Own. Fan-fiction story in which Susan and Edmund from C.S. Lewis's Narnian stories meet Tolkien and discuss a mysterious ancient manuscript.
• Morrow, James. Blameless in Abaddon. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996. Satirical fantasy novel about a man who sues God for allowing evil and pain in the world. God's defense attorney, G.F. Lovett, is a thinly disguised C.S. Lewis. Caustic, but Lovett is allowed to put up a stout defense. Lovett has a brother who is an equally thinly disguised W.H. Lewis.
• Nicholson, D.H.S. The Marriage-Craft. London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1924. Grevel Lindop (2015, p. 112-14) describes this as a philosophical dialogue, more than a novel, in which Williams is depicted as Ronald, a man with unconventional theories about sex and marriage. Nicholson was a friend of Williams; if the reference is correct, this is the earliest known example of an Inkling in fiction. See also Lindop 2009, p. 14-15.
• Niven, Larry, and Pournelle, Jerry. Escape from Hell. New York: Tor, 2009. Set in Dante's Inferno. The spirit of Sylvia Plath is a major character; she refers to C.S. Lewis's books and says she knew Lewis slightly (p. 26-27, 48-49). (This book is dedicated to Lewis.)
• Norman, Philip. Everyone's Gone to the Moon. New York: Random House, 1995. Autobiographical novel of a journalist who (offstage) interviews Tolkien, as the author once did.
• Owen, James A. "The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica." Seven volumes: Here, There Be Dragons, The Search for the Red Dragon, The Indigo King, The Shadow Dragons, The Dragon's Apprentice, The Dragons of Winter, and The First Dragon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006-13. Over the course of their lives, Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams repeatedly travel into an alternate world of myth and story which feeds their own imaginations. The most extensive Inklings-in-fiction to date. The author was Guest of Honor at Mythcon 40 in 2009.
• Paton Walsh, Jill. The Late Scholar. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014. Novel in Paton Walsh's continuation of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey series. Set in 1953, mostly at a fictional Oxford college, St. Severin's. Passing appearance of C.S. Lewis entering the Bird and Baby (99); discussion of Tolkien, mischaracterized as a professor reluctant to tutor female students (134); reference to C.L. Wrenn (misspelled, 173).
• Paling, Kees M. A Rumour of Adventure: An Inklings Story. Self-published, 2018. Short novel in which Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Williams, and Barfield go on a walking tour in May, 1938, and talk about their works in progress.
• Phillips, Michael. The Garden at the Edge of Beyond. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1998. Theological fantasy, akin to Lewis's The Great Divorce, as a visit to a garden-like symbolic afterlife with a spirit guide, this time many spirit guides, of whom one, identified only as an Englishman, is C.S. Lewis.
• Price, Anthony. Tomorrow's Ghost. London: Gollancz, 1979. Chapter 3 of this thriller novel includes a cover-story conversation about Tolkien among fellows in an plateglass university English faculty library. Mostly concerns "On Fairy-stories," but a professor who in his student days knew Tolkien in Oxford offers one personal anecdote, attesting to Tolkien's fascination with trenches.
• Richards, Kel. The Corpse in the Cellar, The Country House Murders, The Floating Body,, and The Sinister Student. London: Marylebone House, 2015-16. The first three books (at least) are also published under variant titles as C.S. Lewis and the Body in the Basement, C.S. Lewis and the Country House Murders, and The Floating Corpse (Smithfield, NSW: Strand, 2013-15). 1930s-style murder mysteries, set in that era, featuring C.S. Lewis as the amateur sleuth, interweaving detecting with conversations about mere Christianity. W.H. Lewis also appears in vols. 1 and 3, which are set in fictional locales; vol. 4 is set in Oxford and features Tolkien and W.H. Lewis, plus an Inklings meeting with (in addition) cameo appearances by Coghill, Fox, and Dyson.
• Ridpath, Michael. Where the Shadows Lie. London: Corvus, 2010. Murder mystery, set in Iceland, with a Tolkien reference. The plot is conected to the search for a lost Icelandic saga concerning a ring of terrible power, which Tolkien is said to have read and which inspired the One Ring. Tolkien is mentioned in passing throughout; some of the characters are dedicated Tolkien fans; (fictional) letters by Tolkien are printed as read by the characters (ch. 13 & 17), as is a book dedication (ch. 26); an anecdote involving Tolkien is told in ch. 22.
• Robinson, Robert. Landscape with Dead Dons. London: Gollancz, 1956. Comic murder mystery, set in Oxford, with an Inklings reference. A newly-discovered poem attributed to Chaucer is described as having been evaluated by Chaucer scholars, among whom Coghill and Lewis are named (chapter 9).
• Schulman, J. Neil. Escape from Heaven. Pahrump, NV: Pulpless.com, 2002. Heretical theological novel which introduces a cabinet of luminaries supporting God, all of whom are said to be reincarnations of earlier luminaries. C.S. Lewis is alias Dante, but his few remarks don't sound like either.
• Stewart, J.I.M. Young Pattullo, A Memorial Service, and The Madonna of the Astrolabe. London: Gollancz, 1975-77. Vols. 2-4 of his five-volume "A Staircase in Surrey" sequence of novels. Duncan Pattullo, in vol. 2 a 1940s Oxford undergraduate, in vols. 3-4 a 1970s Oxford don, interacts with various university characters, including, in these three volumes, his Anglo-Saxon tutor, J.B. Timbermill, a fond but eccentric caricature of Tolkien.
• Tayler, R.J., and J.R. Shakeshaft (as R.J. Tinker and J.R. Crankshaft). "Meeting of the Royal Astrological Society." The Observatory, June 1974. Parody of the proceedings of a scientific meeting, including a report by Professor J.R.R. Talking on astronomical research in Middle-earth.
• Thomsen, Brian M. "Beowulf and the Master of His Critics." In The Further Adventures of Beowulf, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006. Guy Burgess visits Tolkien in 1936 in an attempt to recruit him, as a Beowulf scholar, into a Nazi-sponsored project to promote German culture. Presented as a frame story around new Beowulf-sequel stories by various authors which compose this anthology, purportedly translations of ancient texts Burgess had sent Tolkien.
• Tidhar, Lavie. A Man Lies Dreaming. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2016. Alternate-history novel in which Hitler becomes a private detective in 1930s London, meeting real historical figures including Tolkien.
• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. London: Allen & Unwin, 1954-55. The voice of Treebeard (who primarily appears in vol. 2, The Two Towers) is said by Humphrey Carpenter to be based on the voice of C.S. Lewis (Glyer Company, p. 173; "Disguise," p. 41).
• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Notion Club Papers. In Sauron Defeated, London: HarperCollins, 1992. Incomplete fragmentary novel giving reports on the meetings of a literary club of Oxford dons inspired by the Inklings. Some identifications of the members of the Notion Club with the Inklings are given in a note by the author (described on p. 150-52), and some of these, and some others Tolkien does not identify, match known biographical facts or personality traits of specific Inklings. Discussed briefly by Glyer in Company (p. 185-87) and more extensively in "Disguise," p. 36-40.
• Tolkien, Simon. No Man's Land. New York: Talese/Doubleday, 2017. According to the dust jacket, this novel about World War I was "inspired by the real-life experiences of his grandfather," J.R.R. Tolkien. The protagonist, Adam Raine, is an Oxford student who serves at the Somme, and whose mother had died young, but his personal background does not otherwise resemble J.R.R. Tolkien's.
• Velarde, Robert. Conversations with C.S. Lewis. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008. The shade of C.S. Lewis visits the narrator and takes him on a guided tour through his life, his works, and his religious philosophy. Tolkien, Williams, W.H. Lewis, and Hugo Dyson appear in the Addison's Walk and Inklings meeting (in the pub, not the college) scenes.
• Williams, Donald T. "An Unexpected Meeting." The Lamp-Post, Spring 2005 (published 2007). Vignette. The shades of Lewis and Tolkien visit the author to encourage him in his Inklings II writing group.
• Wilson, A.N. Love Unknown. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986. Contemporary novel with an Inklings reference. In chapter 2, Williams is mentioned as having been a friend of one of the characters, Madge Cruden, during WW2 when she was a publisher and literary hostess.
• Wright, John C. Old Men Shall Dream Dreams. The only (mostly) fictional book on this list: the opening scene was concocted in 2011 to illustrate a point in a writing lesson in John C. Wright's Journal. If the novel existed, it would depict Tolkien, Lewis, and Williams as "secretly involved in a British project to investigate Nazi interest in the occult ... some of the material in their famous books was, of course, a reflection of some real things their work for the government ran into, but were not allowed to reveal due to the Official Secrets Act." The written scene, set during World War II, depicts two fictional characters examining the body of an assassinated hobbit.

Graphic Novels (and other visual fiction)

• Gillen, Kieron (writer), Stephanie Hans (artist), Clayton Cowles (letterer). Die. Issue 3. Portland, OR: Image Comics, 2019. J.R.R. Tolkien appears as the custodian of one section of a demonic prison.
• Harris, Micah (writer) and Michael Gaydos (artist). Heaven's War. Orange: Image Comics, 2003. Supernatural adventure story in graphic novel form. Williams, bringing Tolkien and Lewis along for the ride, takes part in a secret war between the mystics A.E. Waite and Aleister Crowley.
• Morris, Jonathan (writer) and Rob Davis (artist). The Professor, the Queen and the Bookshop. In Doctor Who Magazine 429, 2011. The Doctor gives Lewis a book by the same title, which inspires Narnia. Also features Tolkien under the name John.
• Owen, James A. The Inklings Coloring Book. Kent, OH: Black Squirrel Books, 2016. Does this count? If it was prose it would. It contains a series of pen illustrations, some of them first published in Diana Pavlac Glyer's Bandersnatch, depicting various Inklings singly and severally placed imaginatively in real Oxford locations.

Stage Drama (published or unpublished)

• Eliot, T.S. The Cocktail Party. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950. Stephen Medcalf (CW 100, Autumn 2001, p. 45-46) suggests that the Unidentified Guest, a psychiatrist with remarkable human insights, in this play is based on Williams.
• Nicholson, William. Shadowlands. Play adapted from the 1985 television film rather than the other way around. Recounts C.S. Lewis's romance and marriage with Joy Davidman and his grief at her death, in the context of his Christian faith. Includes the Inklings, but aside from W.H. Lewis these are fictional characters. First produced 1989.
• Purdue, Joseph (music and lyrics), Claire Gibson (book). Unfolding Tales. Musical theatre show inspired by the life of J.R.R. Tolkien, concentrating on his service in World War I and the romance and friendships surrounding this. Concert version produced at Stockwell Playhouse, London, 2017. Cast album available from Purdue's website.
• St. Germain, Mark. Freud's Last Session. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2010. Two-character play in which C.S. Lewis visits Dr. Freud on the day World War II breaks out, for a discussion of belief and atheism. First produced 2009.
• Stewart, Mahonri. The Fading Flower and Swallow the Sun: Two Plays. Provo, Utah: Zarahemla Books, 2012. "Swallow the Sun" is a dramatization of C.S. Lewis's spiritual life, from his 1917 meeting with Janie and Paddy Moore to his 1931 conversion. Includes his Addison's Walk conversation and other scenes with Tolkien and Dyson. W.H. Lewis and Owen Barfield also appear, in separate scenes. Based mostly on Surprised by Joy, with portraits of the Inklings characters little sullied by historical research.

Audio Drama

• C.S. Lewis at War. Focus on the Family, 2013. Written by Paul McCusker. Dramatizes how Lewis came to make his Mere Christianity broadcasts for the BBC during WW2. Interleaves scenes of Lewis working on The Problem of Pain and The Screwtape Letters with scenes of BBC producers looking for more dynamic religious speakers. Includes scenes with W.H. Lewis and with the Inklings, who here consist of Tolkien, Williams, and C.L. Wrenn. Available on CD: two disks, packaged with a four-disk reading of Mere Christianity.
• In a Hole in the Ground, There Lived a Tolkien. BBC Radio 4, 1992. Written by Humphrey Carpenter. Set during Tolkien's years teaching at Leeds (1920-25), this strange piece depicts him as lost in his imagination and unable to function in the world.