John Garth

John Garth is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on the creative development of J.R.R. Tolkien in the context of his times. Tolkien and the Great War, his 2003 biographical study exploring the invention of Middle-earth against the backdrop of the First World War, won the Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship. Ongoing research has produced a codicil, Tolkien at Exeter College, on the formative undergraduate years. As Fellow in Humanistic Studies at the Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada in Las Vegas, he is currently working on his next book about Tolkien.

A contributor to the Blackwell Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien and the Routledge J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, Garth writes regularly for the annual scholarly journal Tolkien Studies. He read English at Oxford and went on to become a journalist, working for many years on the London Evening Standard. More recent work includes web-editing university alumni magazine Oxford Today; writing on cultural topics for major media such as the Guardian, Times and Daily Beast; teaching Tolkien to adults for Oxford University and the Mythgard Institute; and giving regular talks and media appearances in Britain and elsewhere.