J. R. R. Tolkien imitate Morris's prose and poetry romances, from which he took hints for the names of features such as the Dead Marshes in "The Lord of the Rings" and Mirkwood, along with some general aspects of approach. Edward Wyke-Smith's "The Marvellous Land of Snergs", with its "table-high" title characters, strongly influenced the incidents, themes, and depiction of Bilbo's race in "The Hobbit". Tolkien also cited H. Rider Haggard's novel "She" in a telephone interview: "I suppose as a boy "She" interested me as much as anything—like the Greek shard of Amyntas [Amenartas], which was the kind of machine by which everything
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkien's letters published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection contains 354 letters, dating between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death. The letters can be roughly divided in four categories: The last category is especially of interest to Tolkien fans, as it provides a lot of information about Middle-earth which cannot be found anywhere in the works published by Tolkien