Tolkien And The Great War

Product Description

Acclaimed as the best book about Tolkien this award-winning biography explores J.R.R. Tolkiens wartime experiences & their impact on his life & his writing of The Hobbit & The Lord of The Rings. 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 Second World War. Tolkien & 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 & heroism that he experienced as a signals officer in the Battle of the Somme & introduces the circle of friends who spurred his mythology to 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 & evil. John Garth argues that the foundation of tragic experience in the First World War is the key to Middle-earths enduring power. Tolkien used his mythic imagination not to escape from reality but to reflect & transform the cataclysm of his generatuion. While his contemporaries surrendered to disillusionment he kept enchantment alive reshaping an entire literary tradition into a form that resonates to this day. This is the first substantially new biography of Tolkien since 1977 meticulously researched & distilled from his personal wartime papers & a multitude of other sources."