THE WORLD OF TOLKIEN takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the history of Middle-earth, revealing the vast array of mythological, historical, literary, linguistic, and creative sources that Tolkien drew upon to create his absorbing world of myths and archetypes. Tolkien was inspired by a huge body of national mythologies when creating his array of characters, creatures and monsters. The stories of numerous fairy tales and legends are echoed in the narrative of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, while many locations are based on real cities and places.

Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS is most commonly regarded as a work of fantasy. Yet Tolkien himself viewed the epic as a body of myth with an inherent veracity at its core, not an invention, but a recovered truth. In the Middle-earth of THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Tolkien created not an imaginary world, but an imaginary history of our own world. The World of Tolkien draws out the analogies within The Lord of the Rings that render this epic a timeless mythology for the modern age.