Synopses & Reviews
"Very much the best book about J.R.R. Tolkien that has yet been written." -- A.N. Wilson
"A highly intelligent book ... Garth displays impressive skills both as researcher and writer." -- Max Hastings
"It is a strange story that Garth tells, but he tells it clearly and compellingly." -- Tom Shippey
"Somewhere, I think, Tolkien is nodding in appreciation." -- Charles Matthews, San Jose Mercury News
"Gripping from start to finish and offers important new insights." - Library Journal
"A labor of love in which journalist Garth combines a newsman's nose for a good story with a scholar's scrupulous attention to detail... Brilliantly argued." -- Daily Mail
"Insight into how a writer turned academia into art, how deeply friendship supports and wounds us, and how the death and disillusionment that characterized World War I inspired Tolkien's lush saga." - Detroit Free Press
and#147;To be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than in 1939 . . . by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.and#8221;
So J.R.R. Tolkien responded to critics who saw The Lord of the Rings as a reaction to the Second World War. Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of how he embarked on the creation of Middle-earth in his youth as the world around him was plunged into catastrophe. This biography reveals the horror and heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme and introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology into life. It shows how, after two of these brilliant young men were killed, Tolkien pursued the dream they had all shared by launching his epic of good and evil.
This is the first substantially new biography of Tolkien since 1977, meticulously researched and distilled from his personal wartime papers and a multitude of other sources.
John Garth argues that the foundation of tragic experience in the First World War is the key to Middle-earth's enduring power. Tolkien used his mythic imagination not to escape from reality but to reflect and transform the cataclysm of his generation. While his contemporaries surrendered to disillusionment, he kept enchantment alive, reshaping an entire literary tradition into a form that resonates to this day.
Synopsis
"To be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than in 1939 . . . by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead."
So J.R.R. Tolkien responded to critics who saw The Lord of the Rings as a reaction to the World War II. Tolkien and the Great War tells for the first time the full story of a young man plunged into catastrophe as a signaler in the Lancashire Fusiliers at the Battle of the Somme. This moving book also introduces the circle of friends who played a crucial part in shaping Tolkien"s writing and suggests that he used his vast mythology to give meaning to the deaths of two of these brilliant young men.
The period of Tolkien"s life in which he fought in the Great War has remained largely unexplored by his many biographers and fans. John Garth"s unprecedented research leads him to suggest that elements of Middle-earth were influenced by what Tolkien witnessed in the Great War, and that this foundation of tragic experience provides his mythology with its enduring power. Far from seeking escapism, Tolkien used his mythic imagination and linguistic expertise to reflect and transform the cataclysm that engulfed his generation. Whereas other artists surrendered to disillusion, he kept enchantment alive, reshaping the traditional fairy story genre into a form relevant to modern times.
Tolkien"s mythology is a fugue on despair and hope, death and consolation. It has also been embraced as a protest against totalitarianism and the machine, the twin evils that came to obscene prominence between 1914 and 1918. But it was his invention of the hobbits in the 1930s – the ordinary folk in a world of the extraordinary – that gave Tolkien the means to write the multifaceted "war novel" he had been struggling to get out for twenty years: The Lord of the Rings.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-382) and index.
About the Author
John Garth, winner of the 2004 Mythopoeic Society Scholarship Award, studied English at Oxford University and has since worked as a newspaper journalist in London. A long-standing taste for the works of Tolkien, combined with an interest in the First World War, fueled the five years of research that have gone into Tolkien and the Great War and he has drawn extensively on previously unpublished personal papers as well as Tolkien's service record and other unique military documents.
Table of Contents
Contents List of Illustrations ix Maps x Preface xiii part one The immortal four 1 Prologue 3 1 Before 11 2 A young man with too much imagination 38 3 The Council of London 54 4 The shores of Faeand#168;rie 71 5 Benighted wanderers 89 6 Too long in slumber 114 part two Tears unnumbered 139 7 Larkspur and Canterbury-bells 141 8 A bitter winnowing 152 9 and#145;Something has gone crackand#8217; 169 10 In a hole in the ground 186 part three The Lonely Isle 203 11 Castles in the air 205 12 Tol Withernon and Fladweth Amrod 224 Epilogue. and#145;A new lightand#8217; 253 Postscript. and#145;One who dreams aloneand#8217; 287 Notes 315 Bibliography 369 Index 381