Tolkien: A Look Behind "The Lord of the Rings"

Tolkien: A Look Behind "The Lord of the Rings"

Author	Lin Carter
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Ballantine Books
Publication date	1969
Pages	211 p.
Followed by	Lovecraft: A Look Behind the "Cthulhu Mythos"

Tolkien: A Look Behind "The Lord of the Rings" is a study of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien written by Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books in March 1969 and reprinted in April 1969, April 1970, July 1971, July 1972, February 1973, July 1973, June 1975 and November 1977, after which it went out of print for over twenty-five years. The book has been translated into French,Japanese and Polish. A new edition updated by Adam Roberts was published by Gollancz in August 2003; it constituted both the first British edition and first hardcover edition. The first American hardcover edition was published by Tor Books in 2004.

The original version of the book was among the earliest full-length critical works devoted to Tolkien's fantasies, and the first to set his writings in their proper context in the history of fantasy. It was the earliest of three important studies by Carter devoted to fantasy/horror writers and the history of fantasy, being followed by Lovecraft: A Look Behind the "Cthulhu Mythos" (1972) and Imaginary Worlds: the Art of Fantasy (1973), and helped establish him as an authority on the genre, indirectly leading to his editorial guidance of the groundbreaking Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

Carter's study was intended to serve as an introduction to Tolkien for those unfamiliar with his work. His introduction briefly reviews the publishing phenomenon of The Lord of the Rings and its burgeoning popularity in the wake of the first paperback editions in the 1960s, after which he devotes three chapters to a short biography of the author through the late 1960s, including an account of how The Lord of the Rings was written.