The Game-Changer (1982)
The Road to Middle-Earth (1982)
My main idea here was to set Tolkien in the historical context of comparative philology, a discipline stemming from Jacob Grimm, which came to combine both linguistic and literary study. Tolkien insisted on the importance of the former, which is probably one reason why he became so unpopular with literary critics: but it was the source of his inspiration, as this book argues.
tolkien NO. 2 (2000)
J.R.R. TOLKIEN: Author of the Century (2000)
Having tried to put Tolkien in a historical context, I thought this needed to be complemented by setting him in his contemporary context. I made out the case for him demographically (he always won popularity polls), generically (he made fantasy mass-market, as it still is), and qualitatively (he was the greatest of the century’s ‘traumatised authors’).
tolkien essay collection (2000)
Roots and Branches (2007)
This is a collection of twenty-plus papers and lectures, on such topics as “Heroes and Heroism”, “Images of Evil”, “Images of Class”, minor works, and relationship to various works and authors.
Eric Brighteyes
This is only Tolkien-related: a new edition, with introduction and explanatory notes by me, of a Viking novel by Rider Haggard, which Tolkien singled out for praise (as discussed in the introduction).