Connect
Sponsors
Currently Reading
-
Terms
The Book Lady's Blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Reviews and articles posted here are property of The Book Lady's Blog and are not to be posted elsewhere without permission. Please contact me if you wish to post any of my work, or any excerpt thereof, in any other location or format.
Miscellaneous
Meet Bookrageous!
Technical Stuff
Design Credits
Aug
17
The Top Ten Books That Influenced J.R.R. Tolkien
2011 at 10am Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
I’ve had a soft spot for Tolkien ever since my father read The Hobbit to me as a bedtime story more than twenty years ago. I’ve recognized his influence in countless works by contemporary authors, and I’ve always wondered who influenced him. At last, answers! My friend Chris Kubica is a database developer by day and a writer by night, and he runs ePublishing startup neverend media in his “spare” time. He’s here today with a well-researched guest post—think of it as a hypothetical Bare Necessities—about the top ten books that influenced J.R.R. Tolkien. Find Chris on Twitter @chriskubica.
I’m a sci-fi and fantasy buff and have spent many years building (and reading and enjoying) a sizable library of classics in both genres. I keep coming back, as many do, to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien, though, and have re-read each several times. My daughter, Isabella, is just about old enough that very soon I will delight in reading The Hobbit to her aloud as a bedtime story.
Tolkien’s books are classics, of course, and most people I know have read them. But over the years I’ve been fascinated to discover that most people believe that Tolkien single-handedly invented the fantasy genre and before him there was nothing written that could be called what we understand as the fantasy genre…that before him there were fairy tales and before that Greek (and other) myths and before that, the unknown (unknown to my friends and acquaintances, at least). To be honest, I wasn’t sure what came before Tolkien either and I certainly wasn’t aware of what specifically influenced Tolkien’s famous works until I did a little digging…in paper books at first and also online.
I’ve discovered there are many-score books out there that have directly influenced Mr. Tolkien, that we know of, and I thought it would be fun to write briefly about ten of those here—the top ten books that influenced Tolkien, at least in my opinion. Thankfully, most of these books are still in print and available to buy or check out at your local library and if they aren’t in print, many of them are old enough to be in the public domain and thus freely available online or via a free eBook download.
Note: This isn’t an exhaustive list and is totally Chris-Kubica-isn’t-a-credentialed-literature-scholar-subjective, but I’ll bet you haven’t heard of all of these books before!
I’d be happy to hear other people’s thoughts on these and other un-mentioned-here Tolkien influences in the comments.
1. Beowulf by Anonymous
Beowulf is a classic tale of good vs. evil that pits the hero, Beowulf, against two monsters and a dragon. Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University from 1925 to 1945 and read and wrote extensively about Beowulf and other Old- and Middle English epic poetry. Tolkien delivered a seminal lecture on Beowulf called “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” in 1936 and a hard-to-find book on the subject, “Beowulf and the Critics”—which collects much of Tolkien’s Beowulf scholarship in one place—came out in 2002. Tolkien even translated Beowulf himself (his hand-written translation was discovered in 2003).
2. The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rücker Eddison
This very densely written and highly imaginative fantasy novel about a heroic King versus the Lords of Demonland was published in 1922. While Tolkien didn’t buy the philosophical beliefs put forth in the novel and denied that Eddison was an influence on his own writing, he nonetheless once wrote in a letter that “I still think of [Eddison] as the greatest and most convincing writer of ‘invented worlds’ that I have read.” The term “middle Earth” is used in the book, too, to describe the place where the characters live. Eddison was also a sometime guest reader at meetings of The Inklings, an informal literary discussion group at Oxford University that counted Tolkien and Chronicles of Narnia author, C. S. Lewis among its members.
3. The Prose Edda by (probably) Snorri Sturluson and the Poetic Edda by Anonymous
Both of these are quintessential classics of Ancient Norse literature, poetry and mythology. Tolkien wrote about, lectured on and translated these works himself over the course of many years at Oxford University. In addition, many character names like “Gimli” derive directly from Norse mythology. “Gandalf” can be translated as “magic elf” in Old Norse and many believe that Gandalf is inspired by Odin, one of the main Gods in Norse mythology.
4. The Marvelous Land of the Snergs, by A. E. Wyke-Smith
Tolkien called this 1927 collection of tales about a Hobbit-like character (a Snerg) named Gorbo (who is “only slightly taller than the average table”) a “Sourcebook” for The Hobbit and read the book to his children. Read more about the similarity between Snergs and Hobbits here.
5. The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains by William Morris
Tolkien read these early fantasy novel reconstructions of early Germanic life as a child and was profoundly influenced by them. In particular, the name “Gandolf” can be found in these books and scholars suggest that Gollum and The Dead Marshes from The Lord of the Rings draw inspiration from Morris’s works. Fangorn forest and the character of Wormtongue are also said to be inspired by characters from Morris.
Books Chris consulted from his personal library
6. The Book of Wonder by Lord Dunsany
Lord Dunsany was a prolific fantasy short story writer (primarily) who wrote around the turn of the 20th Century. Tolkien mentions Dunsany’s works many times in his collected letters. In one letter he talks about Dunsany’s fantasy character-naming abilities and later in life Tolkien writes fondly about Dunsany’s “Chu-Bu and Sheemish” story. Tolkien also once presented a scholar, Clyde S. Kilby with a copy of The Book of Wonder to help prepare him for his role working on Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (The Lord of the Rings “back story” or “Legendarium” Tolkien wrote over the course of his whole life).
7. She by H. Rider Haggard
Haggard is perhaps best known for his book King Solomon’s Mines which was later made into a several Hollywood movies. But She is acknowledged as one of Haggard’s most influential works—on many writers and books that followed She’s 1887 publication. Tolkien once said in an interview “I suppose as a boy She interested me as much as anything” and also said that another Haggard novel, Eric Brighteyes, was “as good as most sagas and as heroic.” Some scholars have noted similarities between the royal elf Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings and the main character in She.
8. The Red Fairy Book and The Lilac Fairy Book, Edited by Andrew Lang
Scottish dude Andrew Lang edited an immensely popular series of twelve fairy tale collections at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries. Each book is named with a color and contains fairy tales from around the world including translations of many international tales that, before Lang, had never before been read in English.
“The Story of Sigurd”, the last tale in The Red Fairy Book, contains many parallels to Tolkien’s The Hobbit including magic rings, a magic sword and a grouchy, terrible, ferocious dragon. “The Story of Sigurd” is itself a retelling of the Sigurd story from the Völsunga saga, an ancient Icelandic saga that Tolkien was also quite fond of and studied at Oxford University.
I think I’m the only one to point out that the odd word, “Moria” also appears in the title of another The Red Fairy Book tale called “Soria Moria Castle” and I wonder if Tolkien lifted the word from here for The Mines of Moria locale in The Lord of the Rings (or if it is an uncanny coincidence).
Tolkien refers to the introduction to The Lilac Fairy Book in his seminal lecture/essay on fairy tales called, you guessed it, “On Fairy Stories” which legitimizes Fantasy as a serious adult literary genre/form, some say for the first time in history.
9. A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay
Tolkien says in a letter in the 1930s that he read the book “with avidity” “as a thriller” and praised it as a work of philosophy, religion, and morality. Fellow Inkling member C. S. Lewis liked it so much that he later wrote his entire Out of the Silent Planet trilogy based on A Voyage to Arcturus’s central premise (which is: traveling spiritually to another planet).
10. The Princess and the Goblin, by George McDonald
McDonald, a prolific Scottish writer of adult literature (and a minister), also wrote several fantasies, including this book which influenced The Hobbit, most strikingly its goblin characters. McDonald’s The Princess and the Curdie also was an influence on Tolkien, as were McDonald’s fairy tales, especially “The Golden Key.” In a 1938 letter to the Observer newspaper, Tolkien stated that some ideas in The Hobbit “derived from (previously digested) epic, mythology, and fairy-story—not, however, Victorian in authorship, as a rule to which George MacDonald is the chief exception”. Tolkien also read The Princess and the Goblin to his kids.
Further Reading
There are tons of Web sites about Tolkien and his influences you can find on your own. I also recommend the following books on Tolkien’s influences, specifically, and Tolkien in general:
1. Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy, by Douglas A. Anderson
2. J. R. R. Tolkien, A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter
3. J. R. R. Tolkien, Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey
4. The Road to Middle-Earth, by Tom Shippey
5. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter
6. Tree and Leaf, by J. R. R. Tolkien (contains his essay “On Fairy Stories”, mentioned here)
7. The Monster and the Critics (The Essays of J. R. R. Tolkien), by J. R. R. Tolkien
******’
Holler back with your own suggestions in the comments below, and feel free to shoot Chris an email.
Related posts:
I love this post! Of course, I’m all about the influences. I knew that Beowulf would make the list, because I know a (very little) bit about his academic interests. I am not as well-versed on the others, though. I will definitely have to look into The Book of Wonder.
Cassandra´s last blog ..5 Best Books: Re-reads
@Cassandra: Glad you enjoyed the post. I recommend the Penguin Classics Dunsany collection called In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales. It has a great mix of many of his best tales.
And The Kalevala! I’d definitely throw that into a top ten list.
@Megan: Yeppers. There is a little bit about the influence of Finnish Mythology on Tolkien at this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien's_influences#Finnish_mythology
[...] of Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit? If you’ve exhausted your Tolkien collection? Don’t despair, The Book Lady’s blog has put together a great list of books that influenced J.R.R. [...]
I wasn’t sure if you meant it quite that way, but not only the name “Gandalf”, but the names of almost every one of the dwarves in The Hobbit appear in Sturlson’s Prose Edda. They don’t have much to do, but there are a couple sections that are just essentially lists of names, and it’s startling how much crossover there is.
“Thorin”, for instance, is right there and (according to my copy, anyway) the name actually translates to “Oak Shield.”
Also, “faxi” as in “Shadowfax” is an Old Norse word that means “mane”, which is something else I discovered from The Prose Edda. I don’t mean to make a big deal about it, but as a lifelong Tolkien fan, reading The Prose Edda for the first time in college BLEW MY MIND.
More books to add to my TBR pile. Damn you, Chris.
Thank you so much for sharing. I am going to hunt these books down and read them for myself!
chrisd´s last blog ..Interviewing my folks
@braak: Yes, you’re right. Tolkien lifted names from all sorts of old books and stories. For example, most of the people and place names related to Rohan (in LotR) come from Old English (Anglo-Saxon).
I agree with Megan, has to be the Kalevala. Tolkien based his language of the elves on Finnish, for one thing.
Diane Saarinen´s last blog ..August Round-Up
[...] Here are the top 10 books that influenced J.R.R. Tolkien. [...]
Thank you for this great post. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I haven’t heard of those books before (well except of “Beowulf”), but they will find their way to my bookshelf!
Jo´s last blog ..Grow herbs indoors
@Jo: No shame. Glad you enjoyed the post and got something out of it. But be careful…the ten books I’ve listed are a rabbit hole to many others. Once you read The Red Fairy Book, for example, you’ll want to read all 12 in the series. Happy reading!
[...] Book Lady’s Blog has a post on the Top 10 Books that Influenced Tolkien. I can’t say I’ve read any of the books on the list, but I really need to read some of [...]
I love your site… just stumbled across it. The design is awesome, love the pics at the top. I really need to listen to some of these… they look intriguing.
This is a pretty excellent list. I would also include Sir Thomas Malory’s La Mort d’Arthur and the Welsh Mabinogion as major influences (the latter particularly on the Silmarillion material). Probably though the two that are more crucial than any other are (as Megan above pointed out) the Finnish Kalevala–particularly the tale of Kullervo, which along with the Volsungasaga forms the basis of one the longest (and most depressing) tales of the Elder Days, “The Children of Hurin”; and the Anglo-Saxon poem Crist I. The latter contains the lines “Eálá Earendel engla beorhtast / Ofer middangeard monnum sended,” which translated reads “Hail Earendel brightest of angels, / over middle-earth sent to men.” It’s arguable that extrapolating from these lines–finding out who Earendel must be and spinning tales about him–those lines were the original basis for the entire legendarium.
Incidentally, if you haven’t already caught wind of it, I suspect you might be interested in the Mythgard Institute, a center for Tolkien Studies, fantasy literature, and surrounding topics that has just opened. Headed by Dr. Corey Olsen, the “Tolkien Professor”, in partnership with the Middle-earth Network, Mythgard proposes to offer a truly innovative and inexpensive path to open up the discussion about J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. The Institute will in future offer opportunities for grants and scholarships to fund individual research; as of this semester we are offering the opportunity either to audit the classes or to work towards a Master’s Degree in English focusing in Tolkien Studies. Classes are being taught by the top scholars in the field, namely Corey Olsen, Tom Shippey, Verlyn Fleiger, and Michael Drout. Come check us out at http://www.mythgard.org/.
Hubby and I are taking a class on Tolkien and the Silmarillion. We knew some of these books (in fact, we read The Princess and the Goblin to the kids recently) but it is nice to see more. Thanks!
Great list, thanks!
On a more philosophical note with the regards to language, Tolkien also mentioned at some point that Owen Barfield’s Poetic Diction was highly influential.
Matt J.´s last blog ..Good news does not lead to despair
Also, @Braak: Thorin does not translate to “Oak Shield”; “Eikenskjaldi” does. It is a different dwarf in this list, which comes from the Voluspa, but Tolkien thought that it was more of a nickname, and that it implied a story that he was compelled to find out (that story eventually being revealed as the Battle of Azanulbizar). He gave it to the lead dwarf of the Company after changing that dwarf’s name from Gandalf to Thorin (Gandalf the Wizard was originally called Bladorthin).
D. Scott Holbrook-Foust´s last blog ..Moodle Site Now Open
What an interesting article!
Also: the Kalevala, which should probably be #1; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Pearl; and the Holy Scriptures.
This is excellent work and answers a lot of my questions. But here’s one more: Do you know if Tolkien ever read Robert E. Howard? I would assume not, seeing as how Howard’s work was not greatly appreciated in England during the period Tolkien was writing, but I’ve often been struck by similarities in their work, and I’ve wondered which influences they may have had in common. Specifically: it’s always fascinated me the degree to which both Middle Earth and Howard’s Cimmeria are filled with ghostly ruins of lost, forgotten, greater civilizations. One would think that the reason for writing in an era inspired by the ancient past would be to capture some sort of prelapsarian ideal, but both Tolkien and Howard’s heroes live in “fallen worlds”, with the sense that their meager civilizations are incapable of understanding or bettering the mysterious majestic ruins that dot the landscape. If Tolkien didn’t get this from Howard, where did they both get it from?
Matt Bird´s last blog ..What’s the Matter With Hollywood, Part 7: CGI Ruins Stories, Too
[...] The Top Ten Books That Influenced J.R.R. Tolkien [...]
Great list. You can read more about the influence of the Norse sagas and eddas in my online book Tolkien’s Cauldron. Gloriana St. Clair
Glaring omission here is the Bible which was very much known to influence Tolkien and all of his circle.
[...] -The Top Ten Books That Influenced J.R.R. Tolkien. [The Book Lady's Blog] [...]
A great list – several of my favourite books included, plus a few I haven’t come across. You’ve mentioned William Morris, but I’d definitely suggest including his The Well at the World’s End, which Tolkien seems to have followed as the overall plot-structure of LOTR, even though the actual details are completely different (it even finishes with a Scouring of the Shire episode). Incidentally, another Morris book, The Water of the Wondrous Isles, seems a fairly obvious influence on Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
I read the Worm Ouroborous once; it was dreadfully hard to get through. Very long-winded descriptions and battles upon battles that had no sense to them. At least, I couldn’t see it. But I definitely saw the influence on Tolkien (which is one of the reasons I wanted to try and read it)