An Unexpected Guest (Influence of William Morris on J. R. R. Tolkien's Works) (Critical Essay‪)‬

J. R. R. Tolkien, always a very private man, was frequently irritated to receive letters suggesting "sources" or "inspirations" for The Lord of the Rings in the work of other writers. However, he was proud to acknowledge one influence, that of William Morris. Replying to a correspondent who had asked about the effects of his First World War experiences on his work, Tolkien had this to say about the landscape of Middle-earth, the setting for both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: "The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains" (Letters 303). All Tolkien's biographers make a passing reference to the influence of Morris, as does Fiona McCarthy in her biography of Morris. With one notable exception (Burns), most writers have concentrated on studying the echoes of Morris's poems, sagas and romances to be found in Tolkien's work. However, two of Morris's other works, an account of a trip to Iceland and a utopian fantasy, may also have influenced Tolkien. J. R. R. Tolkien was born in South Africa in 1892, but spent the bulk of his childhood and adolescence in the industrial Birmingham of the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth centuries. There were also two brief, but important, sojourns in the West Midlands countryside. A clever boy, Tolkien attended King Edward VI School in New Street, Birmingham and then Exeter College Oxford, following the same route as another Birmingham boy whose childhood had been without beauty, Edward Burne-Jones.