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The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien: The Places That Inspired Middle-earth
Top of the pile
76
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
85/100Critics
67/100Scholars
Author:
John Garth
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Date:
June 9, 2020
A Tolkien scholar takes readers on a tour of the places that inspired The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and other classic works, including through reprints of Tolkien's own drawings, illustrations from other artists, rare archival images, and color photos of contemporary locations across Britain and beyond.
What The Reviewers Say
Every page brings forth the elegiac tone of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. Ostensibly it’s about the landscapes that inspired Middle-Earth; but it’s also, unavoidably, a history of the man and his ideas.
... a fascinating, gorgeously illustrated and thought-provoking examination of the landscapes, cities and architecture that inspired Tolkien during his lifelong creation of Middle-earth.
What John Garth adds to the ever-proliferating pile of Tolkien-related media is a careful eye and steady step.
Clearly a painstaking scholar, the author of the much more comprehensive Tolkien and the Great War ignores the poetry and creativity underpinning Tolkien’s classic, dissecting it in an over-thought (and, at times, overwrought) search for connections to the author’s real-life.
