It is a peculiarly British slice of history that our greatest works of fantasy should have emerged from a group of academics sitting in a smoke-filled local pub. The group was, of course, the Inklings and the pub was the Eagle and Child (known colloquially as the Bird and Baby) in Oxford.
The group included the bard of myth and children’s fable Roger Lancelyn Green, the creator of Narnia, C.S. Lewis and, perhaps most famously of all, the Lord of Middle Earth himself, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings.
Whilst Tolkien’s magnum opus garnered mixed notices upon publication (in a 1956 review for The Nation, Edmund Wilson dismisses it as ‘juvenile trash’ and that ‘Dr Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form’), retrospective positive analysis coupled with its adoption amongst the ‘heads’ of the 1960s counterculture have ensured The Lord of the Rings’ immense popularity over the decades. Its awesome reputation has resulted in numerous sumptuous gift editions of both the fantasy touchstone itself and other iconic works from the pen of the master. Discover the most exquisite here.
Published in 1937 and now regarded as a children’s fantasy classic, The Hobbit introduced iconic characters such as Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf and the dragon Smaug as well as the fictional realm of Middle-earth. Twelve years in the writing, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings deepened and expanded this beautifully realised universe. Published in three volumes – The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King - in the mid-1950s, Tolkien’s epic quest narrative tells of Bilbo’s nephew Frodo and company’s perilous mission to destroy the One Ring in the Cracks of Doom, thus thwarting the evil Sauron’s plans for dominion over Middle-earth. Here you will find our paperback editions of both The Hobbit and all iterations of The Lord of the Rings.
From the elvish haven of Rivendell to the fiery pits of Mordor, and from the rolling hills of the Shire to the ‘industrial hell’ of Isengard, Middle-earth is full of stunningly realised locations described by Tolkien in breathtaking, richly evocative detail. It is no surprise, therefore, that his work has inspired many artists to craft stunning visual interpretations of Middle-earth’s geography and inhabitants as well as producing volumes of maps, language, lore and more. Delve deep into the background of Middle-earth with these gorgeous books.
Such was Tolkien’s fame at his death in 1973 that the demand for fresh material continued unabated. Fortunately, his son Christopher proved a worthy custodian of his father’s literary canon, overseeing the posthumous publication of several previously unpublished manuscripts and unfinished stories, collected here.
There have been a vast array of adaptations of Tolkien’s work over the decades from radio dramatisations to Peter Jackson’s Academy Award-winning The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy between 2001 and 2003 and the epic new series The Rings of Power. But nothing beats the original texts delivered on audiobook by some of the best voice actors around; the perfect way to engage with the world of ring-wraiths, orcs and trolls wherever you may be.
From the battlefields of the Somme to his time as an Inkling at Oxford University alongside C.S. Lewis, much has been written about J.R.R. Tolkien’s life and work and how he was inspired to build the meticulously envisioned worlds of Middle-earth. The selection below ranges from biography to critical studies to Tolkien’s own writings on aspects of fantasy lore and language.
The childhood landscape that influenced Tolkien’s later fantasy world was a mixture of the gentle, rolling countryside of the West Midlands, the industrial hub of Birmingham, and the wilder hills of the Welsh borders.
A keen linguist, Tolkien showed an early proficiency in Latin, Greek and Finnish, as well as making up his own languages for fun. During active service in the First World War, having lost all but one of his close friends, he started to pull together stories ‘in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents’, a collection which later became the posthumously published Book of Lost Tales.
Returning from the front, he began a career in academia, first in Leeds where he and his colleague E.V. Gordon collaborated on their translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and then at Oxford, where he wrote his version of Beowulf.
Some of Tolkien’s earliest stories began life as tales for his children, including The Pocket Roverandom, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Farmer Giles of Ham, alongside his treasured Letter from Father Christmas.
Having idly come up with the idea of a creature living in a hill, Tolkien found himself needing a world and a story to put him in and so Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf and the first pieces of the Middle Earth puzzle were realised in The Hobbit. A modest success, several critics dismissed the book, with one commenting,‘this is not a work which many adults will read through more than once,’ - a view he was perhaps later forced to concede that was somewhat short-sighted.
Tolkien’s second foray into the world was The Silmarillion but publishers rejected it as too dense – Tolkien agreed ‘they were quite right’ and later revised the text. He returned to his earlier notes for the three volumes (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King) that would become The Lord of the Rings, a book that was to take him fourteen years to write.
Early modest sales and critical reception in Britain were aided by a hedonistic, 1960s counter-cultural following in the United States, its nororiety accelerated by a pirated paperback edition, forcing one University of California, Berkeley official to describe The Lord of the Rings as ‘more than a campus craze; it’s like a drug dream’. It was a following Tolkien had mixed views about, describing it as an ‘absurd frenzy’; it was nevertheless a frenzy that would make him not only famous, but wealthy.
Tolkien died in 1973 having achieved the status of a cult hero, enjoying considerable commercial success. Many Waterstone’s booksellers began their reading lives with his books and were delighted when he came top in our poll to find the greatest book of the twentieth century.
Despite being against dramatizing the books – he famously said ‘it would be easier to film The Odyssey,’ – they have nevertheless become some of the most watched (and profitable) films of all time.
Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien (himself a former Inkling and writer) has overseen the posthumous editing and publishing of many of Tolkien’s early works and drafted stories including The Children of Húrin, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Fall of Arthur and, in 2017, The Tale of Beren and Lúthien.
Tolkien insisted to the last that his books couldn’t be updated and shouldn’t be seen as allegories but as what he intended them to be – fairy tales designed not to imagine our own world but to create another. ‘The reader must approach Faerie with a willing suspension of disbelief. If a thing can be technologically controlled, it ceases to be magical.’
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