One of the oldest ideas in my projects drawer concerns writers, primarily fabulists, that were more known as playwrights during their lifetime but are now usually known for one thing or in one area. Most of those on my list lived during the reign of Queen Victoria and/or King Edward VII. This afternoon's project is WWI. I'm just going to slide links for research material around here:
Tolkien and WWI: He joined the Lancashire Fusiliers as a second lieutenant.
More on the Battle of Somme which Tolkien experienced before being mustered out with trench fever.
Green Man Review covers John Garth's Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth.
Kate Nepveu covered John Garth's "Frodo and the Great War" for Tor.com. Interesting, but it appears here that Garth goes overmuch into connections between the war and The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien maintained one wasn't a metaphor for the other.
Or not. From a letter to Professor L. W. Forster dated 31 December, 1960: The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally, I do not think either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence on either the plot or the manner of it's unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of 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.
Picture of a WWI revolver, 2nd Lt Tolkien's, in this case.
The Pietist Schoolman covers WWI as regards Tolkien and CS Lewis.
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