JRR Tolkien – A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter

As a lifelong fan of JRR Tolkien, an author to whom I owe an immense debt for inspiration, it's kinda scandalous that I've not delved into his history up until quite recently. The 2019 biopic can, in my opinion, only loosely nod at Tolkien's earlier years and does not in the least do any justice to the man and his immense literary output. When I encountered JRR Tolkien – A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter on Audible, I popped it onto my wishlist and eventually got around to giving it a listen.

Narrator Roger May does a sterling job bringing the words to life, and I was surprised by how quickly I ate my way through the book. It of course helps that I find the subject matter absolutely fascinating, but the production quality is excellent, which most certainly adds value to the overall experience.

Put simply, Tolkien had an incredibly intense, focused intellect – words really were his jam, if we excuse my dreadful abuse of idiom. He was also very much a product of his time, something that we who live in a more liberal society should keep in mind. Tolkien's milieu was mostly divided along strict gender roles – and he was very much a man's man in terms of where he sought his friendships. Yet by equal measure, he adored his wife Edith – in a way I feel that saw her placed upon a pedestal. Humphrey does touch upon the tensions that occasionally arose between Tolkien and Edith – the man really did inhabit two worlds.

It's my opinion this gender-based segregation was a product of the then educational institutions in a largely patriarchal society, which was further reinforced by Tolkien's experiences fighting in the trenches during WW1. This life-and-death camaraderie between men is echoed quite clearly in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It is what it is – cultural artefact of an era.

What Humphrey further unpacks is Tolkien's fascination with languages, which infuses everything from his academic work all the way to his ambitious fiction writing. Whether it's digging into the old Germanic languages upon which English has its foundations laid to the creation of imaginary languages in Middle-Earth, it's clear that this was a topic that engaged his imagination – and mine, too! I've often heard complaints that Tolkien's writing is too slow, too detailed, too boring, but for those with the patience and the love of the sound of words, each paragraph is a carefully crafted work of literary art. And this is a hill I'm prepared to die on.

In short, if you're looking for an introduction into the Prof's life and writing, and are curious about how works like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings went from hand-written manuscript to final product, that went on to spawn a popular multi-media fandom, then this is a good place to start. We even get to see the kindling and cooling of his friendship with another literary luminary – CS Lewis.

I can't help but wonder how things would have been different for the fantasy genre if Tolkien had more time (or the wherewithal) to expand on the other stories that exist as mere synopses in The Silmarillion. Although he is not the first to write fantasy, he most certainly ushered the genre into popularity, and many authors who followed in his wake were most certainly heavily inspired by his Middle-Earth.