Book Review

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend, Colin Duriez

This one was a gift in my Christmas books. Thank you,... Dawn? I think? It's just a biography of Tolkien focusing on the experiences of his life that definitely did or possibly may have inspired the collective content in his Middle Earth lore. From buildings to people to his experiences in WWI. He had an official biographer who was given all of Tolkien's personal papers and family records and Duriez cites his work often. But I think this is a more condensed biography that follows his journey of writing his magnum opuses. Beginning with the first inspirations in his youth and love of languages, and moving through the most impactful changes in his life like the death of his parents and meeting Edith, who he always thought of as his Lúthien. It describes him bouncing his ideas and stories off the minds of the men in his first club the Tea Club and Barrovian Society formed when he was still a student in college and naturally the interactions of the Inklings. They would hang out together and be each other's beta readers. One of them even got tired of Tolkien's elves and forbid him to offer any more chapters to the group. But Lewis kept him motivated in private. His relationship with C.S. Lewis was of special interest to me, of course. But I was surprised at how crucial Lewis' encouragement was to getting Lord of the Rings completed and published. It details his, even their (his and Lewis') crusade to make the fantasy genre respectable. All of us who enjoy the genre credit Tolkien as the father of it, but it's amazing just how true that statement really is. It tracks his children's involvement with the stories especially Christopher who shared a special understanding of the works enabling him to organize them. But also his daughter Priscilla's involvement by typing up a lot of work for him. And it details his brief interaction with fame after LOTR caught fire in American publication. It wasn't agreeable to him, but he wasn't impolite about it. In the middle is a series of photographs of the different buildings he grew up in and around, colleges he taught at, and the all important Eagle And Child pub. He mentions a lot of places in the book that no longer exist, so these are gems.

It also gives brief summaries of some of his other "fairie stories" along the way and it makes me want to look a few up. I already had purchased his Father Christmas letters he'd written to his children a few years ago and I'm delighted to know there are other outlets of his creativity. So I definitely recommend this little book for fans of The Professor. It's an interesting read.