The Road to Middle-Earth The Road to Middle-Earth The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology is a scholarly study of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien written by Tom Shippey. In Great Britain it was first published by Allen & Unwin in 1982, with a second edition published in 1993 by Harper Collins and a revised and expanded third edition published in 2003. It is currently published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. The book discusses the sources of Tolkien's inspiration in creating the world of Middle-earth and the writing of works including "The Hobbit", "The
J. R. R. Tolkien of Joseph Stalin. During World WarII, Tolkien referred to Stalin as "that bloodthirsty old murderer". However, in 1961, Tolkien sharply criticized a Swedish commentator who suggested that "The Lord of the Rings" was an anti-communist parable and identified Sauron with Stalin. Tolkien said, "I utterly repudiate any such "reading", which angers me. The situation was conceived long before the Russian revolution. Such allegory is entirely foreign to my thought." Tolkien vocally opposed Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party before the Second World War, and was known to especially despise Nazi racist and anti-semitic ideology. In 1938, the publishing house Rütten