Tolkien's Modern Reading by Holly Ordway

 

I got this book last week, and although it is a very ‘meaty’ volume, I read it (deeply absorbed) from about noon until 4 AM in the morning. I do not think I have been so engaged in a work about Tolkien since T. A. Shippey’s The Road to Middle-Earth published in 1982.

Ordway’s thesis is that we have been given a fallacious view of Tolkien as someone who read very little literature beyond the Middle Ages. She attributes this growing myth to certain simplistic views expressed by Humphrey Carpenter in the authorized biography of 1977, misunderstood statements by Tolkien himself that were taken out of context, and an amount of “filling in of DNA” from the opinions of notably anti-modern C. S. Lewis.  

She goes on to support her theory by carefully counting over 200 ‘modern’ works (defined for the purposes of the study as anything published from 1850 onward) by over 150 modern authors. Ordway cites only books that can be confirmed by Tolkien’s mention in his writings and letters, their presence in his library, their use in his teaching, interviews, and as reported by people close to him. She categorizes them neatly by type (novels, children’s books, etc.) and devotes whole chapters to big influences like George Macdonald, William Morris, and Rider Haggard. The book concludes with a neat little chart that organizes all the authors and their works. It is much more readable than the useful but rather dry listings from Oronzo Cilli's Tolkien's Library.

The scholarship on display is amazing, and gracefully shows the ten years she spent on the project. There is little that is theoretical, and what there is, is plainly marked and not included in the definite citations. There is a Photo Gallery illustrating the book (in color and half-tones) showing pictures Tolkien definitely would have seen, given his editions, and that strongly indicate an influence on his own visual style or imagination.

What Ordway’s work mainly reveals (without denying or downplaying the major medieval sources, interests, and influences on Tolkien) is that he was not some sort of crank or fuddy-duddy locked in his ivory tower but was engaged with his contemporary culture. He read works by Roy Campbell, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce. I enjoyed finding out that he had read The Wizard of Oz and works by Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury. But what really tickled me was that he owned Stories of King Arthur by Blanche Winder, which was the first book I ever read of a version of the ‘Matter of Britain’ and which I have ever considered my protoevangelium to The Hobbit.

Holly Ordway’s study goes a great deal further in filling our portrait of Tolkien, who has always seemed to be a somewhat enigmatic figure. What I mainly took away from Ordway’s book (besides a meticulously and convincingly articulated case for her argument) was that Tolkien was not quite the somber, enigmatic figure that Carpenter presented us with over forty years ago. I always wondered, in the words of Charles Shulz’s Schroeder, something to effect of, “How could he have been Beethoven (or Tolkien, as the case might be) and not be happy?” Ordway leaves me with the impression somehow (without stating it out loud) that Tolkien was more cheerful than he has been given credit for.