A friend recently traveled to Oxford, England. On his blog he mentioned that J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis used to meet in a pub there. They actually met with a group of writers who encouraged one another in their craft. Tolkien and Lewis were only the most successful. Curious, I started looking Oxford up on the web. Every March they host a Writers’ Festival. No wonder, because in addition to the two mentioned above, Oxford has been able to claim some of the most famous English writers in the world. Oscar Wilde was an Oxford student, and Lewis Carroll, of Alice in Wonderland fame, was also a resident. Thomas Hardy lived in Oxford for a time, and Philip Pullman still does. Certainly there seems to be a connection between the educational atmosphere and the arts. A writer, of course, requires no educational credentials. Writers are writers. Still university towns house that increasingly rare commodity—bookstores. When y...
Blog of a struggling writer.