A leading scholar draws on fifty years of reading and studying J.R.R. Tolkien to explain how he created an entire world

No writer has surpassed the epic achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent decades refining his world of Middle-earth. In The Tower and the Ruin, Michael D.C. Drout explores Tolkien’s genius, allowing us to glimpse the making of works from The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion to lesser-known books such as The Fall of Gondolin as well as his poetry.

We see how Tolkien invented myths, legends, cultures, languages, histories and an intricate, multivocal narrative. We come to understand how, early on, Tolkien drew upon and modified material he found in Beowulf, the Kalevala and other medieval literature from Northern Europe, and how he later developed the complex form of sorrow that is the primary theme of his mature works. Sweeping and hugely perceptive, The Tower and the Ruin illuminates Tolkien anew.