And we start our portrait of Tolkien with his mother—a welcome surprise in this tale of a group that rigorously excluded women—because Mabel Tolkien set in motion her son’s madly spinning top of mind, from which epic poems, children’s stories, fantasy novels, invented languages, literary essays, philological studies, songs, watercolors, and pen-and-ink sketches would take flight for the next eighty years.

Zaleski, Carol, and Philip. The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. (see pg. 13)