Master of Middle Earth
In the late Sixties, no hippie backpack was complete without a well-worn copy of J. R. R. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'. The appeal to the 'love generation' of this saga of rings, hobbits and dark lords lay in its evocation of a mythological arcadia. At a time when a highly sophisticated western superpower was waging war on an agrarian Third World country still rooted in the middle ages, Tolkien's simple dichotomy of right and wrong struck an obvious chord. And it still, clearly, has much to say to us in the early 21st century.
Tolkien, a South African-born professor of Anglo Saxon English, started writing 'Lord of the Rings' in 1937, the year his children's book 'The Hobbit' became a commercial and critical success. He had already started work on a 'prequel' to 'The Hobbit', but this book, 'The Silmarillion', would not be published until 1977, four years after his death.
'Lord of the Rings' was finally published in 1954, but it was only when a paperback edition was issued, more than ten years later, that the book caught on and became a best-seller. Now, nearly 50 years after its first publication, 'Lord of the Rings' is reaching a completely new audience thanks to Peter Jackson's big budget film, 'The Fellowship Of The Ring', which has spawned a merchandising onslaught surpassed only by its cinematic rival, 'Harry Potter and The Philsopher's Stone'.
Like J. K. Rowling's creation, however, Tolkien's magical trilogy will last long after the last Gandalf lunchbox has been sold. The reason is that 'Lord of the Rings' offers readers the chance to escape into a self-enclosed private universe. Few writers have evoked a mythological world as vividly as Tolkien, and Middle Earth, the setting for all of his books, has its own language, legends and history.
Tolkien saw his mission as creating a mythical world to match those of Greece and Scandinavia. "I was from early days aggrieved by the poverty of my beloved country; it had no stories of its own, not of the quality that I sought and found in legends of other lands," he wrote.
Tolkien's evocation of a kinder, simpler, world has an obvious appeal, as does his uncomplicated moral universe, which bore the imprint of his Catholicism. Religious concerns pervade his epic tale, and from its publication in the wake of the Second World War to the no less uncertain climate of today, the book has never lost its contemporary relevance. Indeed its lesson, that the victory of good over evil often carries an uncomfortably high price, has never seemed more pertinent. | 
JRR Tolkien |
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