One of the great things about the success of Peter Jackson's blockbuster trilogy of films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is that it has sent so many people, especially young people who purportedly don't read, back to the book itself, writes Brian Maye.
Next Thursday is the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of Tolkien's three-volume masterpiece.
For the past half-century, The Lord of the Rings has had an enduring appeal. In the 1960s, Tolkien's work was taken up by many in the newly born "counter-culture", who were attracted to it by his concern with environmental issues. It has consistently come top of polls seeking to discover people's favourite books. For example, in 1997 it headed three separate British polls (organised by Channel 4/Waterstone's, the Folio Society and SFX, the UK's leading science-fiction magazine), which asked readers to vote for the greatest book of the 20th century.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1976) knew loss early in his life: his father died when he was only four. Born in South Africa, he lived with his mother and younger brother in King's Heath in the West Midlands, in a house that backed on to a railway line. The sight of coal trucks with such mellifluous South Welsh place-names as Nantyglo, Penrhiwceiber, and Senghenydd passing his window every day must have inspired the young boy's developing linguistic imagination.
His mother's conversion to Catholicism in 1900 proved of profound significance for him and he remained a devout Catholic throughout his life. (He described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work".) Since his father's death, the family had lived in genteel poverty but in 1904 his mother was diagnosed as having diabetes, which was incurable at that time. At the young age of 12, he was not only orphaned but effectively destitute. His local parish priest, Father Francis Morgan, now took responsibility for the Tolkien boys' material as well as spiritual welfare.
The young Tolkien was already showing remarkable linguistic gifts. He had mastered Latin and Greek and was becoming adept at a number of other languages, both modern and ancient. Also, he already enjoyed making up his own languages. At 19 he went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he studied the classics, Old English, the Germanic languages, Welsh and Finnish. Midway through his four-year degree course, he changed from classics to English language and literature.
The Old English poem, the Crist of Cynewulf, made a deep impression on him, especially the couplet "Eálá, Earendel, engla beorhtast /Ofer middangeard monnum sended" (Hail, Earendel, brightest of angels, over Middle Earth sent to men). "Middangeard" was an Old Norse term for the everyday world between Heaven above and Hell below. The couplet inspired some of his early, rudimentary attempts to portray a world of ancient beauty in verse.
He served on the Western Front during the first World War and took part in the Battle of the Somme but was fortunate enough to be sent back to England suffering from "trench fever". All but one of his close friends were killed in action. Partly in honour of their memory and partly in reaction to his own war experiences, he began to put his stories into shape. The result was The Book of Lost Tales (not published in his lifetime) where one meets for the first time tales of the Elves and Gnomes with their languages, the wars against Morgoth, the siege and fall of Gondolin and Nargothrond, and the stories of Túrin, Beren and Lúthien.
Tolkien's first academic appointment was as a lecturer in English language at the University of Leeds in 1920. While there, he continued writing and refining his Book of Lost Tales and his invented languages. In 1925 he became professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. He retained this position for 20 years, switching then to the chair of English language and literature, which he occupied until retirement in 1959.
According to himself, one day when he was marking exam papers he came across one where a page had been left blank in the answer book and on this page he wrote: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." From this there grew a tale which Allen and Unwin published in 1937 with the title, The Hobbit. It was an immediate success and has been on children's recommended reading lists ever since.
The publishers asked for a sequel and Tolkien took up the challenge. The complex 16-year history of the evolution of what eventually became The Lord of the Rings would require a separate article in itself. Allen and Unwin were not optimistic about the new work's prospects in the marketplace but decided to publish it in three parts during 1954 and 1955.
Reviews varied from the euphoric (W.H. Auden and C.S. Lewis) to the dismissive (Edmund Wilson and Edwin Muir) with every shade of opinion in between but the book sold very well in hardback form. However, it was the pirated paperback version of 1965 that really got things going. The publicity caused by the copyright dispute attracted millions of readers, especially Americans.
The book acquired a cult status in the so-called "alternative society" of the late 1960s, which caused Tolkien mixed feelings. Naturally he was flattered and, to his amazement, became quite rich. On the other hand, he was far from impressed by those who thought that The Lord of the Rings could best be appreciated while on an LSD trip. The book inspired a whole new surge in fantasy literature, some of which could only have caused him dismay.
The quiet Oxford don is more than 30 years gone to his final rest but his profound and imaginative work continues to appeal to newer and younger generations. The filmed version has been an enormous and deserved success and can only have a beneficial effect on literacy levels.