Author of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion,
JRR, the king of fantasy literature and a great creator
Tolkien
We delve into the creative inspiration behind that vast worldview!

Elves, orcs, dwarves… JRR created a fantasy adventure world now familiar to people around the world.
A book titled "Tolkien's World," which traces the lifelong inspiration Tolkien received during his creative process, has been published.

In this book, readers are guided by the author on a journey through the English countryside and cities, the seas and rivers, the icy plains of the Arctic, the mountains of the Alps, the ancient great forests of Europe, the sunken lands, the battlefields, and the factories of the Industrial Revolution that inspired Tolkien's creation.

Renowned Tolkien scholar John Garth traces Tolkien's life, works, and lectures to identify and present the sources of his influence, one by one.
To bring this to life, we included drawings by Tolkien himself, photographs of actual locations, and drawings by other related authors.
This book is the ultimate guide for both readers just beginning to delve into Tolkien's world and those who have long enjoyed his world deeply.
It will also serve as an excellent reference for fantasy writers who are curious about how great creators create their grand worldviews.

“The English countryside was absolutely stunning.
If you ask what Middle-earth is based on, it's the original form.
I would answer that it was based particularly on the awe and delight I felt in a pristine land.” This meant that the “northwestern atmosphere” of Britain and all of Europe was for Tolkien “both ‘home’ and ‘discovered’.”
---From "From England to the Shire"

Tolkien said that Welsh was the inspiration for The Lord of the Rings.
He felt that Sindarin, a language inspired by Welsh, “could give readers more enjoyment than anything else.”
It was really wishful thinking.
But just as the words 'Senghenid' and 'Tredegar' written on coal trucks drew Tolkien into Welsh, I'm sure 'Gondor', 'Anduin', 'Lothlorien', and other names on his maps drew me right into his epic.
---From "The Four Winds"

All of this adds up to a rich, elegant, and consistent picture of the world, giving us something of the kind of faith we place in the real world.
Tolkien called this a 'secondary belief'.
The storyteller “creates a secondary world in which you can empathize.
What the storyteller says in it is ‘truth.’”
---From "Land of Lucien"

Tolkien credits Lauterbrunnen with giving him names like Deepwater, Laudwater, and Bruinen.
Among the finest works he painted for The Hobbit, the six paintings of the Deep Valley, perhaps the pinnacle, have been repeatedly revised to capture the essence of the Swiss valleys.
---From "Roots of the Mountain"

But the machines and Uruk-hai beneath Isengard are probably H.
It could be said that it was inspired by the “gloomy Molochs who tinker with their machines” in G. Wells’s The Time Machine.
Tolkien initially placed the giant spiders underground after reading and finding "somewhat amusing" another science fiction thriller, Joseph O'Neill's 1935 The Land Beneath England.
---From "Roots of the Mountain"

Tolkien recalled that he devised much of the early legendarium "in gloomy canteens, in lectures in the cold fog, in barracks filled with swearing and obscenities, or by candlelight in bell-tents, or even beneath trenches under artillery fire."
He didn't simply escape to fairyland.
At the time, and later, Tolkien wrote “to express ‘feelings’ about good and evil, fairness and injustice, to explain them rationally, and simply not to get bored.”
---From "Places of War"

Middle-earth was created to reflect what Tolkien loved most and hated most about his own world.
It is created by bringing together numerous real landscapes and places, ancient and modern, wild and cultivated, and destroyed.
Indeed, one could say that the landscape itself placed on the Legendarium page conveys a moving message.

---From "Crafts and Industry"