The Lord of the Rings: Great Books Explained

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In 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien was 62 years old and had just spent the last 16 years working industriously on a book. It was now time to release it into the world and he was very nervous.
And he should have been - because no-one had seen anything quite like The Lord of the Rings before.

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"What a brilliant series this is" - Stephen Fry on Twitter

SUBTITLES
I input the English subtitles myself but I rely on volunteers to do subtitles for other languages and I really appreciate it - just contact me at [e-mail]

Transcript review by Margarida Mariz (2025)

CREDITS
Co creator Michael DiRuggiero
Actor: Roger Surridge
Sound Engineer (UK): Robert Lewis

Opening Animation and Title Sequence by Brian Adsit (instagram https://instagram.com/brian_vfx?utm_m... and Behance www.behance.com/badsit88)

IMAGES
Thumbnail Gandalf image: Nidoart
Scouring of the Shire: Owen William Weber @www.oweber.com

VIDEOS
All the videos, songs, images, and graphics used in the video belong to their respective owners and I or this channel do not claim any right over them.

MUSIC
"Theme" music: JS Bach “Sonata for violin solo No.1 in G Minor”
Sibelius, The Swan of Tuonela
Jerusalem (Hymn), music written by Sir Hubert Parry, Lyrics b William Blake
Elven anthem by Katarzyna Bartnik - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M0BAJIb6mA

FILMS AND TV
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003) - ©New Line Cinema
The Lord of the Rings (2022) - ©Warner Bros
Rings of Power (1966) - ©Amazon
dune 2 (2024) - ©Warner Bros
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope - ©Lucasfilms

PODCASTS
The Rest is History (Lord of the Rings), Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook
The Lord of the Rings Podcast (The Topic Archives), Albert Chessa
Lord of the Rings (BBC) - Brian Sibley

BOOKS
Lord of the rings - JRR Tolkien
Humphrey Carpenter. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. [Houghton Mifflin, 1987].
Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien, editors. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. [William Morrow, 2023].

Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

This episode is sponsored
by the Manhattan Rare Book Company.

In 1954, J.R.R. Tolkien was 62 years old,

and had just spent the last 16 years
working industriously on a book.

It was now time
to release it into the world,

and he was very nervous.

And he should have been,

because no one had seen anything
quite like "The Lord of the Rings" before.

It was a huge risk for the publishers

who were convinced
that it wouldn't sell many copies.

Who was the audience for this strange book

filled with unfamiliar and unpronounceable
names of people and places?

Was it a children's book
like "The Hobbit"?

It certainly had wizards
and strange creatures,

and it was also an epic adventure
of some kind.

It was also very, very, long.

Three volumes in fact,

and several appendices.

But no, it was neither a children's book
or an adult novel.

Tolkien wrote to his publisher
at the time:

"My work has escaped from my control
and I have produced a monster,

"an immensely long, complex,

"rather bitter, and rather
terrifying romance,

"quite unfit for children
(if fit for anybody)..."

"I now wonder whether
many beyond my friends [...],

"would read anything so long."

"We can only imagine
what was at stake for Tolkien.

If the first volume wasn't a success,

what would happen to the other two volumes

which he had spent
the best part of 16 years writing?

In the early 1930s, when Tolkien
was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford,

he was grading papers when he noticed

that one of the candidates
had left a blank sheet of paper.

"Nothing to read. So, I scribbled on it
I can't think why:

"In a hole in the ground
there lived a Hobbit"

And so, the Hobbits were born.

The Hobbit can broadly be considered
a prequel to The Lord of the Rings.

It introduces Tolkien's world
of Middle Earth.

The world of Hobbits, wizards,
dwarves, and elves.

But it is a much different book,

with a different intended audience.

Upon publication,
Tolkien''s friend C.S. Lewis

compared "The Hobbit" to such classics

as "Alice in Wonderland"
and "The Wind in the Willows",

and like those works
it has often been considered

a children's fantasy book

written primarily
for children or adolescents,

but enjoyed by adults as well.

"The Hobbit" was a huge success

and only a few weeks
after its publication,

Tolkien met
with his publisher Stanley Unwin,

to discuss a sequel.

The writer expressed his desire to publish

a long, detailed, mythological work

about Middle Earth,
called the Silmarillion.

But Unwin insisted that
what the public really wanted,

was more stories about the Hobbits.

He wanted The Hobbit 2.

Tolkien and Unwin had variations
of this debate

for the entire 16 years Tolkien
was working on his next book.

Ultimately the Lord of the Rings

succeeded in developing
Tolkien's Middle Earth,

without losing
the narrative appeal of "The Hobbit".

The result was not so much a sequel
but a much more complex, adult work.

In the process Tolkien had invented
a whole new genre - the fantasy novel.

"I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size).

I like gardens, trees
and unmechanized farmlands,

"I smoke a pipe,
and like good plain food."

"- J.R.R. Tolkien

Tolkien in his later years professed
to love the simple life,

much like his beloved
Hobbits in the Shire.

This desire for peace, security,
and companionship, however

was likely the result of his upbringing
and young adulthood,

which was anything
but peaceful and secure.

This quintessentially English Professor

was born John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
in Bloemfontein,

in what is now South Africa, in 1892.

In 1895 Tolkien, his mother,
and his infant brother, Hillary,

went to England for a visit
to his mother's family,

who like her were British.

But soon after their arrival,
his father died in Bloemfontein,

of rheumatic fever,

leaving the family
with very little inheritance.

The family stayed in Britain,
where she had the support of her family,

and moved to the small village of Sarehole

just outside the industrial city
of Birmingham.

Although they didn't have much money,

Tolkien became captivated
with his environment.

He would later say:

"It was a kind of lost paradise.

"There was an old mill that really
did grind corn with two millers,

"a great big pond with swans on it,

"a sandpit, a wonderful dell with flowers,

"a few old-fashioned villages houses

"and, further away,
a stream with another mill..."

The village scenery
would Inspire the Shire.

But it was just outside
the major industrial city of Birmingham

which was expanding rapidly

and in the process absorbing
the surrounding villages.

"I was brought up in considerable poverty,

"but I was happy running about
in that country.

"I took the idea of the Hobbits
from the village people and children...

"The Hobbits are just what I should like
to have been but never was...

"an entirely unmilitary people

"who always came up
to scratch in a clinch...

"Behind all this Hobbit stuff
lay a sense of insecurity.

"I always knew it would go - and it did."

The theme of the destruction
of idyllic countryside

would fill his literature.

Tolkien's mother Mabel was the primary
influence on his early life.

In 1900 when Tolkien was 8,

Mabel converted to Catholicism.

Her family, who were Methodist,
disapproved.

Her father disowned her,

and her brother-in-law,
who had been assisting her financially,

withdrew his support.

It was a spectacular fall from grace,

a theme we often find in Tolkien's books.

She homeschooled him
until the age of eight,

encouraging him to read widely,

and introducing him to the works
of George McDonald and Andrew Lang,

early developers of fantasy literature.

In 1904 however, when a Tolkien was 12,

Mabel died of diabetes,

hastened, Tolkien later believed,

by persecution for her faith,

leaving her two sons orphaned
with bleak prospects.

He took refuge in language,
learning Chaucer's Middle English,

the old Norse of the Viking sagas,

the old English of Beowulf,

and even reviving long dead languages

and inventing languages of his own.

"I first began seriously
inventing languages...

"about when I was 13 or 14,
and I've never stopped really."

School was a haven for Tolkien.

He first attended
King Edward's School in Birmingham,

and it was here crucially, that he formed
his first literary group

the "Tea club and Burrovian Society",

four friends who played rugby together,

and talked about Norse mythology,

while drinking tea
and inventing languages.

Groups like this were important to Tolkien

a fatherless boy, and now an orphan.

And it was the first
of many literary groups

that Tolkien would form
- a fellowship of sorts.

Even this early on, he was obsessed
with myths, legends, and folklore,

and concerned with creating
a British mythology.

He won a scholarship
to Exeter college, Oxford,

and unsurprisingly he showed
a special aptitude for languages,

Old and Middle English,
Old Norse, and Gothic in particular.

Graduating in 1915 with a degree
in English language and literature,

with First Class honors.

And it is these studies that will lead

to the creation of a series
of languages in Lord of the Rings

which are among the most fully developed
fictional languages in literature.

But 1915 could only mean one thing...war.

And almost immediately after graduation

he was commissioned
into the Lancashire Fusiliers.

"The Lord of the Rings" is
at its most basic level, a hero's quest.

But the hero in this case
is not someone strong and fierce

like Odysseus, Beowulf, or Aeneas,

but the Hobbit Frodo Baggins,

a diminutive creature who, at his core,
like other Hobbits,

wishes to be left alone
to enjoy peace, good food and fellowship,

in his homeland the Shire.

Frodo has no special abilities,

and is extraordinary, only in his courage,
loyalty, and incorruptibility.

And the quest of Frodo and his companions
is most unusual.

Instead of trying to gain power,

they are dedicated to the destruction
of the one thing, a magical ring,

that would give them great power.

In fact, the quest succeeds,

because the idea
that someone would forego power

and intentionally destroy the most
coveted possession in their world,

is a thought that is impossible
for their enemy Sauron to anticipate,

or even to contemplate.

Tolkien was an academic deeply steeped
in the tradition of the Epic,

but he also knew
how to subvert those traditions,

to create a new kind of Epic,

that address the fears
and concerns of his generation

- the generation of World War One.

War of one kind or another
permeates "The Lord of the Rings",

through death and loss,
through notions of power,

through camaraderie in deathly times,

and eventually through disappointment.

Tolkien took part
in the battle of the Somme,

one of the most horrific battles
of the 20th century.

Over 3 million men fought in the battle,

which saw over a million
killed or injured,

scarring the Earth in one
of the most deadliest battles

in human history.

He saw many of his school friends
die in the fighting,

and by 1918, he said that he had lost
all but one of his closest friends.

In some sense he was lucky

to have contracted
a severe case of trench fever

near the end of the battle of the Somme,

and sent back to England to recover.

While convalescing in army barracks,

with the war very much fresh in his mind,

Tolkien put to paper much of the story

that would later become
"The Fall of Gondolin",

a story published after his death,

of a cataclysmic battle featuring orcs,
dragons, and bullfrogs,

and notably his first work
to feature "Middle Earth".

"They walked slowly, stooping,
keeping close in line,

following attentively
every move that Gollum made.

"The fens grew more wet, opening
into wide stagnant meres.

"among which it grew
more and more difficult,

"to find the firmer places
where feet could tread

"without sinking into gurgling mud...

"Wrenching his hands out of the bog,

"he sprang back with a cry.

" 'There are dead things, dead faces
in the water', he said with horror.

" 'Dead faces!' "

Although Tolkien here is describing
the outskirts of Mordor

in his fictional Middle Earth,

it is not hard to imagine this
as a description of Tolkien's experience

during the battle of the Somme.

The I World War begins as a battle
on horseback with cavalries,

but it is the beginning
of mechaniZed warfare.

Characters in "The Lord of the Rings"

describe being watched
by mysterious figures flying overhead,

and in 1914, airplanes on both sides
were first used for reconnaissance,

flying deep behind enemy lines.

Over the course of the war,

aviation developed significantly
into a major force,

and by the end of that war

it was obvious that airplanes
were the weapon of the future.

"Then Frodo and Sam staring at the sky...

"saw it come: a small cloud
flying from the accursed hills,

"a black shadow loosed from Mordor;

"a vast shape winged and ominous."

"It scudded across the moon,

"and with a deadly cry went westward,

"outrunning the wind in its fell speed."

He is at the Somme
when tanks were first used,

and although Orcs make up the bulk
of Sauron's Army

in "The Lord of the Rings",

one of his most powerful weapons
were the tanks of Middle Earth

- the "Olyphants".

Newsreel: "A state of war once more exists

between Great Britain and Germany"

Tolkien began writing
"The Lord of the Rings"

at the outbreak
of the II World War, late 1937.

So the world was once again
on the precipice of war.

Tolkien denied
it was an allegory of any kind

in the forward to the book,

but also admitted that an author
is influenced by his experiences.

The writing of the novel began
during the rise of Hitler,

and continued during the darkest days
of World War II,

when all hopes of a peaceful
New World Order had vanished,

especially for someone living in England

and in constant fear of air raids
and Nazi victory.

"If you really come down
to any 'large' story

"that interests people - that can hold
their attention for a considerable time

"stories - human stories - are practically
always about one thing: death."

The I World War almost certainly
had more influence on Tolkien,

but "The Lord of the Rings"
can also be considered part

of post-World War II literature,

that includes "The Lord of the Flies",
"1984", and "Animal Farm",

books that were marked
by their author's wartime experiences,

and deal with the question
of good and evil.

"Sauron was become now
a sorcerer of dreadful power,

"master of shadows and of phantoms,

"foul in wisdom, cruel in strength,

"misshaping what he touched,
twisting what he ruled."

In "The Lord of the Rings"

there is the rise of an evil force Sauron,

who is not unlike Hitler

in his desire for power
and world domination.

Just like countries during the war,

some societies in the book,

whether out of self-interest or fear,
side with Sauron,

adding to the hopelessness
of the good-hearted.

The fate of the world
is at stake in both worlds,

and the outcome hinges on a race

to prevent ultimate power
getting in the wrong hands.

Crucially, the ring
is not just about power,

it is about what we do with power

and how it can corrupt us,

and how that corruption
can be addictive

leading to the eventual loss
of your Humanity,

as the evil within you is exposed,

absorbing all morals.

The very things that were being discussed

at the outbreak, during,
and at the conclusion of World War II.

The horrific evils of the 20th century
were just around the corner.

Despite the horrors
Tolkien witness firsthand,

"The Lord of the Rings" is not,
as you might expect, explicitly anti-war.

Tolkien may describe battles,
almost poetically,

and place an emphasis
on heroism in combat,

but for a man who spent his life
studying traditional myths and legends,

often involving war,

he understood that nobility often means

that we need to take up
arms for a "just" cause.

The Lord of the Rings is, in fact,

a book about
the "unfortunate necessity" of war

- when it is a just war - against evil.

But crucially, Tolkien also understood

that there was good and evil
on both sides of war,

an unpopular sentiment in a time

when those boundaries
were being blurred beyond recognition.

He was outspoken against bombing campaigns
on German cities,

and even used
a quote from "The Lord of the Rings",

in a letter to his son
about the campaigns:

"You can't fight the enemy
with his own ring

without turning into an enemy".

He knew, as the characters
of the fellowship do,

that just because one fights for good,

it doesn't make one immune
to the power of evil

- to the power of the ring.

The Fellowship must resist
the temptation of the ring,

as we must resist
using evil to fight evil.

Tolkien understood
that bravery is a complex notion,

for while battles swarm around him

it is our little hobbit Frodo who succeeds
on his journey by avoiding war.

But even he is not immune
to war's effects and trauma.

When the war is over
and he is returning to the Shire,

Frodo confesses to Gandalf,

in one of the most poignant
passages in the book,

that he is in pain,

as so many shellshocked men
of the trenches were.

" 'Alas! there are some wounds that cannot
be wholly cured', said Gandalf.

" 'I fear it may be so with mine',
said Frodo.

"There is no real going back.

"Though I may come to the Shire,
it will not seem the same;

"for I shall not be the same."

"I am wounded with knife, sting and tooth

"and a long burden.

" 'Where shall I find rest?'

"Gandalf did not answer."

After World War I, and certainly
during World War II,

artists and writers had to wrestle
with a new reality:

"How to present life
in the aftermath of such horrors?"

"Were the old stories of heroism
even relevant anymore?"

Tolkien, through his fictional world,

has reinvented the heroic epic
for our times.

Giving us a fresh and more ambiguous
perspective on modern warfare,

through the realm of fantasy.

You may get all the heroics,

but there are also points when
his greatest heroes are full of fear

Reducing "The Lord of the Rings"
to a heroic quest or a war narrative,

is convenient and an aid
to our understanding,

but ultimately
does disservice to the book.

It more likely
just exposes our difficulties

in identifying exactly
what this strange work is.

"If you want my opinion,

"a part of the 'fascination'
of 'The Lord of the Rings"

"consists in the vistas
of yet more legend and history,

"to which this work does not contain
a full clue..." - Tolkien

The action of the book takes place
over a relatively short period of time,

but throughout "The Lord of the Rings",

we hear tales and legends about the past,

often stretching back thousands of years.

Tolkien hasn't just written a story,

but has given us the impression

that we are witnessing a series of events,

inside an entire history
that exists outside of the books.

Although he is just one writer,

he has created an entire mythology

comparable to traditional
cultural mythologies.

"Bowen: And you took 14 years
to make this story.

"Tolkien: Quite so, yeah.

"I took 14 years and not
for the general thing it is now

"but for finding time schemes
and getting everything right and so on.

Documenting the history of Middle Earth,

was a lifelong project of Tolkien.

In his letters, notes
and unpublished works

he filled in details of this mythology,

complete with elaborate genealogies,

and geographical details.

Tolkien had the genius to make it sound

like it was a "real history"
he was exploring,

as if he was just "researching" it
and reporting it to us.

There had been fantasy books
before Tolkien,

but never had there been
such successful "world building",

with such a serious tone
and seismic events.

"What I'm doing now,
is to try and write in Elvish.

"but mt writing
is very inferior to the Elves

Their standard meeting when greeting:

"A star shines upon our meeting"

From 1924 to 1945,

Tolkien was the professor
of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford,

and even after
the huge success of "The Hobbit"

and "The Lord of the Rings"

he continued to teach at Oxford,
until his retirement in 1959.

He developed
15 different dialects for Elvish

for "The Hobbit"
and "The Lord of the Rings",

and as a soldier during World War I,

Tolkien even developed a secret code
to communicate with his wife.

For Tolkien, language
is where it all begins.

"The invention of languages
is the foundation...

"To me a name comes first
and the story follows."

He believed that the nature of a society
was Inseparable from its language.

To understand a people,
you must understand the language.

The sounds, syntax, and expressions
can all evoke a mood

and reveal the values of a people.

And Tolkien has given
all of his fictional races in the book,

not only their own complex history,

but also, their own fully
developed language,

with its own alphabet,
expressions, and sounds.

It is a remarkable encyclopedic feat

that fleshes out
even the most minor characters.

At one point, Frodo hears
the elves singing in the forest.

It is part of a poem
from "The Lord of the Rings" in Elvish,

which some have likened
to a Roman Catholic Marian hymn.

The sounds are flowing and musical,

reflecting how the elves speak,

underscoring their reverence
for grace, beauty and nature.

The dwarves however speak
the more direct language of "Kazul",

reflecting their emphasis
on craftsmanship and precision.

The language of the hobbits
is filled with colloquialisms,

and expressions centered around
the simple pleasures of life.

The orcs have a savage and gutural tongue

that exposes their brutality.

Even among the races of man,
Tolkien uses distinguishing styles.

The Rohirrim, pepper their language

with references
to horsemanship and warfare,

while those from Gondor speak
with a more formal and elevated style,

emphasizing their nobility
and ancient heritage.

Passages in invented languages
help create an immersive experience

and are critical
to Tolkien's world building.

We become convinced that we are learning
about a time, different from our own,

from a historical world
that really did exist.

Tolkien felt so strongly

about the centrality
of language to his work,

that he once commented
he would have preferred

to have written "The Lord of the Rings"
entirely in Elvish,

but ultimately left in only as much

as he thought his readers would endure.

Because of Tolkien, invented languages

have now become standard
in fantasy epics,

most recently seen in modern versions
of "Dune" and "Game of Thrones".

This chapter, comes
at the end of the book

and doesn't feature in many of the films.

But is an integral chapter
when looking at Tolkien.

It is a deeply pessimistic look
at what happens

when our returning heroes,
the hobbits, go back to their Shire,

this bastion of middle England,

these idyllic agricultural spaces,

to find that everything has changed.

Industry is now polluting
their once pure rivers,

and the Shire is now,
in effect, a police state.

"It was one of the saddest hours
in their lives.

"The great chimney rose up before them.

"and as they drew near
the old village across the water,

"through rows of new mean houses

"along each side of the road,

"they saw the new mill

"in all its frowning and dirty ugliness:

"a great brick building
straddling the stream

"which it fouled
with a steaming and stinking outflow.

"All along the Bywater Rod
every tree had been felled."

This is a classic idea
of the homecoming hero

facing further obstacles,

that we can find in Homer's Odyssey

amongst other "quest literature".

The Shire is now run by Ruffians
with a dictator-like chief

whose gatherers count,
keep track of productivity,

and enforce endless rules.

The Hobbit's inns are closed

because the chief disapproves of beer

and beautiful old dwellings are demolished
to create ugly new ones

- surely a reference
to the desperately needed

new social housing post-World War II.

And there are hundreds of "shiriffs",

a kind of Hobbit police force,

who drag anyone who stands up
for their rights to prison.

We can go back to Tolkien's
experiences in World War I,

when returning veterans were promised
a new life fit for heroes,

but in fact, return to unemployment,
continuing poverty,

homelessness - and even worse -

the wholesale destruction
of their way of life.

It was a betrayal.

Tolkien was famously
anti-industrialization,

and politically conservative
when it came to "big government",

and this can be seen as a veiled attack

on the post-war Labor government,

and what conservatives
saw as "interference",

"regulation", and even
"socialist ideology".

At one point, the Hobbits discuss
the gathering of local farming produce,

so, it can be "shared out equally",

but this ideal never quite works
the way it should do.

A scathing critique
of socialist principles.

The scouring of the Shire chapter

was written after the end
of the II World War,

and I think it's hard to deny
(although Tolkien did),

that there is also an allegorical element
to this chapter,

with the Ruffians behavior
echoing the Nazis,

in the way they used collaborators,
informers, threats, torture,

and the imprisoning
and killing of dissenters.

At one point the "shiriff" Hobbit says:

"I am sorry Mr. Mary, but we have orders".

A chilling phrase that we will hear
time and again at the Nuremberg trials.

These are all reflections
which would have meant

so much more to a British
reader in the 1950s:

The rapid pace of change
in terms of industrialization,

devastation of the countryside,

regulations of all kinds,

government interference
and the advent of Big Brother.

Yes, everything had changed
while the hobbits were away,

but everything had changed
for the British too.

This is one of the most complex and
contentious issues surrounding Tolkien,

a committed Catholic
in a Protestant country,

and one who stated categorically

that "The Lord of the Rings"
was not a religious allegory.

In many ways, it is a pagan book

and draws on those sources
of the Norse myths

- which are pre-Christian.

There are no churches,
no religion and no God

in "The Lord of the Rings".

And yet, when Tolkien was attacked
upon publication,

for the apparent lack
of religion in the book,

it was he confessed:

"The only criticism that annoys me..."

Tolkien is clear,

that in such a pre-Christian world,

it would have been in congruous

to include any
explicit references to Christianity,

and yet, in a private letter,

to the Catholic priest,
Father Robert Murray,

Tolkien explained:

"The Lord of the Rings" is of course

a fundamentally religious
and Catholic work;

unconsciously so at first,

but consciously in the revision."

That is why I have not put in
or have cut out,

practically all references
to anything like religion.

to cults or practices
in the imaginary world."

"For the religious element is absorbed
into the story and the symbolism..."

Much has been made
in Tolkien scholarship of this letter,

for it seems to conflict with his other
more public statements.

"People do not fully understand

"the difference between
an allegory and an application.

"But what does it actually mean
for a book to be religious,

"or, in this case, a Catholic work?"

Do we have to, as many have done,

make the case for Frodo
as a Jesus figure?

Or make direct parallels
between Christianity and Middle Earth?

Certainly, there are strong
Christian elements throughout,

most evident in the larger themes

of the importance
of sacrifice and selflessness,

the focus on hope and redemption,

the lure of temptations
and the existence of evil.

These values and others however,

also overlap with similar themes
in Pagan literature,

or Norse myths,

or countless other sources
Tolkien would have studied.

Perhaps it is simply a case
that being a Catholic

was an important part
of Tolkien's identity,

and his personal values,
fears and concerns

would naturally be manifested in his work.

"You are obliged, any author I imagine,

"is obliged to call on his stock
- private stock.

"I am dreading the publication

"for it will be impossible
not to mind what is said.

"I have exposed my heart
to be shot at."

Tolkien wanted "The Lord of the Rings"
published in one huge volume,

with the Silmarilion attached.

But the publishers refused.

And so, the book
was split into three volumes,

and published from 1954 to 1955.

When it was finally issued
in its entirety,

for the most part
the reviews were positive.

"One reviewer once said,

"this is a jolly book,
all the right boys come home

" and everyone's always happy and glad...

"It isn't true of course.

"He can't have read the story.

His good friend C.S. Lewis
wrote enthusiastically to Tolkien.

"I congratulate you.

"All the long years you have spent
on it are justified."

And championed him in print.

The poet W.H. Auden called it
a masterpiece

and in his review in the New York Times,

compared it to Milton's "Paradise Lost".

In "The Lord of the Rings",

Tolkien takes Anglo-Saxon and Norse sagas,

ancient Celtic poetry, Milton,
Dickens, Browning, and more,

to create his world

- but his comparison with Milton
is an important one.

Historically, great poets aspire
to write a national epic

in imitation of Homer or Virgil.

Milton famously tried to go beyond
the boundaries of a national epic

to explain the origins of all Humanity.

Many have argued
that "The Lord of the Rings"

is a national epic for England or Europe.

In general Tolkien was never
as explicit as Milton in his motives,

but admitted he was inspired
by Finland's national epic the Kalevala,

and throughout his life
insisted that Middle Earth

was not an imaginary world,

but rather an imaginary historical moment
in our very real world.

Tolkien's new genre - "heroic fantasy",

"epic fantasy", "world-building fiction"

- whatever we choose to call it -

is now a huge part of our culture,

and has inspired an entire industry
of movies, books, and games,

centered around epic quests in new worlds.

Without Tolkien,
would we even have Star Wars?

Game of Thrones? Harry Potter?

Or games like Dungeons and Dragons,
World of Warcraft, Magic: The Gathering?

Tolkien was a giant of literature

who created a world so fully formed,

so complex and so enigmatic

that we forget that the creation
of Middle Earth

changed the entire literary landscape.

"Of course, "The Lord of the Rings"
does not belong to me.

"It has been brought forth

"and must now go its appointed way
in the world,

"though naturally, I take
a deep interest in its fortunes,

"as a parent would of a child."

"I am comforted to know
that is has good friends

"to defend it against
the malice of its enemies."

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Thanks for listening.