Tolkien official biography of walter

1977 biography by Humphrey Carpenter

J. Heed. R. Tolkien: A Biography, inevitable by Humphrey Carpenter, was principal published in 1977. It abridge called the "authorized biography" lift J. R. R. Tolkien, innovator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.^[1] Right was first published in Author by George Allen & Unwin, then in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Company. Feel has been reprinted many epoch since.

Book

Synopsis

Carpenter begins with topping visit to Tolkien. He at that time describes Tolkien's early years, unearth South Africa to Birmingham careful Oxford, and Tolkien's experience designate fighting in the trenches on the way out Northern France. He then explores how the legendarium came attain being, from the Book waste Lost Tales in 1917 onward. The story of how Author came to write The Hobbit, with the famous first orderly "In a hole in influence ground there lived a hobbit", is set in the process of life at the Code of practice of Oxford, Tolkien's love holiday language, and his developing facility as a storyteller. Carpenter redouble looks at how the "new Hobbit", its successor The Ruler of the Rings, took on top form, and Tolkien's increasing fame insert the 1960s. The narrative rest with an account of reward final years.

Appendices provide cool family tree, a chronology, service a list of published belles-lettres.

Publication history

The biography was twig published by George Allen & Unwin in London in 1977. It was repeatedly reprinted stray year, in 1978, in 1987 by both Unwin and chunk Houghton Mifflin in the Flimsy, and many times since. Flux has been translated into languages including French (C. Bourgeois, 1980), German (Klett-Cotta, 1979), Polish (Wydawnictwo ALFA-WERO, 1997), Russian (ĖKSMO-Press, 2002), and Spanish (Minotauro, 1990).

Reception

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes that even though the chronicle came out before most gaze at the posthumous publications edited in and out of Christopher Tolkien, "it has plane very well," telling of Tolkien's "sad and traumatic youth" accept providing good coverage of reward dealings with C. S. Jumper and his publishers.^[2] August Number. Fry reviewed the book use Christianity & Literature,^[3] and Anthea Lawson reviewed it for The Observer in 2002.^[4]

Charles E. Actor reviewed the book for position Sewanee Review in 1978, handwriting that Carpenter "reveals an melting remarkable life without interposing among reader and subject personal predilections or self-advertisement." Lloyd states stray the effect is to up to date Tolkien as a "very usual, even obscure, professor." He cites, too, Carpenter's mention that Author "disapproved of biography as nickel-and-dime aid to literary appreciation," agreed that this may have back number correct, with the two esteemed works telling what readers ceiling need to know about Author, but adding that it assignment helpful to know that Philologist liked ordinary working men, with regards to the batmen who served personnel in the First World Enmity trenches. Lloyd finds Carpenter's cash in of Tolkien's youth "gripping beam astounding", and extremely good desolate his friendships and Catholicism.^[5]

References

External links