Savvy Saturday – England (Part II of III)

Greetings from England! Last week, I highlighted three literary places to visit in London. This week, I’m highlighting three places in Oxford (and associated works of literature) that I’m going to visit.

1. Eagle and Child Pub

The meeting place of the Inklings (including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien), the Eagle and Child provided some of England’s most famous fantasy authors with much-needed liquid sustenance and literary critique and feedback from their peers. Interesting facts: Treebeard from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series was loosely based off of C.S. Lewis, and the character of Ransom from Lewis’s space trilogy (starting with Out of the Silent Planet) was loosely based on Tolkien.

2. Oxford University

Oxford University has been the setting for several great works of fiction, as well as the academic home of authors including Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. It is also the home of the Bodleian Library, which began serving scholars and readers in 1602.

3. Wolvercote Cemetery & Holy Trinity Church

As a fantasy writer, and as you have probably gathered already, an avid Lewis and Tolkien fan, I can’t go to Oxford without stopping by the burial sites of these two giants of fantasy literature. Tolkien is buried in Wolvercote Cemetery, while Lewis is buried in the graveyard at Holy Trinity Church, both of which are in Oxford.

 

I will likely be spending quite a while in the library here, so to quote Tigger (another British character), “TTFN, Ta Ta For Now!”

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