Themes of The Lord of the Rings This is, according to Shippey, a very modern, 20th-century theme, since in earlier, medieval times, power was considered to "reveal character", not alter it. Shippey mentions Lord Acton's famous statement in 1887, that ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men..."" He then goes on to point out authors that were dealing in the same themes of power and corruption at around the same time as Tolkien wrote his work. These authors include George Orwell with "Animal Farm" (1945), William Golding with "Lord of the Flies" (1954), and T. H. White with
The Lord of the Rings recorded under the pseudonym 'Shagrat the Vagrant', before forming a band called Shagrat in 1970. The Lord of the Rings The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 fantasy novel "The Hobbit", but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, "The Lord of the Rings" is one of the best-selling novels ever written, with over 150 million copies sold. The title of the novel refers to the story's main antagonist, the