John Garth

Internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on the creative development of J.R.R. Tolkien in the context of his times, John Garth is the author of Tolkien and the Great War (2003), which won the Mythopoeic Award for Scholarship in Inklings Studies. His new book The Worlds of JRR Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth is published in 2020 by Frances Lincoln (UK) and Princeton University Press. Garth was the 2015-16 Fellow in Humanistic Studies at Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received the Tolkien Society award for outstanding contribution to Tolkien studies in 2017.

Garth has contributed biographical chapters to the book accompanying the major 2018 Bodleian exhibition, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, and to the Blackwell Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien. He has also written for the Routledge J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia and, regularly, for the annual scholarly journal Tolkien Studies. He read English at Oxford and worked for many years on the editorial staff of the London Evening Standard. Now a freelance writer, editor and lecturer, he has written on cultural topics for major media such as the Guardian, Telegraph, Times and Daily Beast; taught Tolkien (and sometimes C.S. Lewis) for Signum University, the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, and Oxford University; and spoken regularly in the US, Britain and Europe. For further information, articles, links, and contact details, see www.johngarth.co.uk.