TOLKIEN IN THE GREAT WAR: The Threshold of Middle-earth
John Garth, . . Houghton Mifflin, $26 (398pp) ISBN 978-0-618-33129-1
This dense but informative study addresses the long-standing controversy over how J.R.R. Tolkien's WWI experience influenced his literary creations. A London journalist, Garth is a student of both Tolkien and the Great War. He writes that when war broke out, Tolkien was active in an Oxford literary society known as the Tea Club and Barrovian Society (TCBS), along with three of his closest friends. Finishing his degree before joining up, Tolkien served as a signal officer in the nightmarish Battle of the Somme in 1916, where two of those friends were killed. The ordeal on the Somme led to trench fever, which sent him home for the rest of the war and probably saved his life. It also influenced a body of Northern European–flavored mythology he had been inventing and exploring in both prose and verse before the war, toward its evolution into
Reviewed on: 10/13/2003
Genre: Nonfiction
Compact Disc - 978-0-00-833774-2
Hardcover - 398 pages - 978-0-00-711952-3
MP3 CD - 978-0-00-834739-0
Paperback - 432 pages - 978-0-618-57481-0