Tolkien and the Great War:

The Threshold of Middle-earth

John Garth

London: HarperCollins, 2003; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003; Milan: Marietti, 2007; Shanghai: Wenhui, 2008.

Winner of the Mythopoeic Award for scholarship, 2004.

   

• ‘Very much the best book about J.R.R. Tolkien that has yet been written ... Even if you are not a Lord of the Rings fan, I commend this ... I have rarely read a book which so intelligently graphed the relation between a writer’s inner life and his outward circumstances.’
- A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard, 2003. Read more...

• ‘Garth’s masterpiece – it really is one...’
- A.N. Wilson, Daily Telegraph, 2006. Read more...

• ‘A highly intelligent book … Garth displays impressive skills both as researcher and writer.’ - Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph. Read more...

• ‘Journalist Garth combines a newsman’s nose for a good story with a scholar’s scrupulous attention to detail ... Brilliantly argued.’ - Daily Mail. Read more...

• ‘Powerful, persuasive and deeply moving, sending one back to read with fresh eyes of that band of brothers, the Fellowship of the Ring.’ Christopher Hart, Daily Telegraph. Read more...

• ‘A study of this kind requires its author to wear many hats: archival researcher, military historian, literary critic, ancient philologist. Garth diligently fulfills all of these responsibilities.’ The Lion and the Unicorn. Read more via Project Muse...

   

The first substantially new biography of J.R.R. Tolkien since 1977, Tolkien and the Great War has been distilled from a vast range of military and personal papers including the previously unpublished letters of Tolkien and his close circle of friends.

Turning the spotlight on Tolkien’s most formative period, Garth tells how Middle-earth emerged from the savage crucible of the modern world. And he reveals a hitherto unseen Tolkien: not the familiar Oxford professor of The Lord of the Rings fame, but a passionate and wildly imaginative young man caught up in the tragic crisis of his times.

Garth shows that Middle-earth should be recognised, not as an escapist fantasy, but as an eloquent and extraordinary counterblow against the disenchantment that afflicted entire generations as a result of the First World War.