J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

it was an interesting method but because he believed that the myths wer

The ‘problem of America’

As is proper for valedictory addresse

In his essay ‘On Fairy-Stories’

But maybe that is what happens to the elves.

stream of the strange count

But where are th

He believed that it was possible sometimes to feel one’s way back from words as they survived in later periods to concepts which had long since vanished, but which had surely existed, or else the word would not exist.

he was also reaching back to an imaginative world which he believed had once really existed, at least in a collective imagination: and for this he had a very great deal of admittedly scattered evidence.