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Tolkien
Sources behind Middle-earth
15 entries · 2 sections
J.R.R. Tolkiens' Middle Earth did not come out of thin air. Tolkien, an academic linguist, drew on the following source materials to inspire his world-building exercise. The texts presented at this site are complete and in some cases in the original languages.
The Kalevala. [English]The Kalevala. [Finnish]The Elder (Poetic) Edda.The Younger (Prose) Edda.Wagner's Ring of the NiblungThe Volsung SagaThe NibelungenliedHeimskringla or The Chronicle of the Kings of NorwayBeowulf [Modern English]Beowulf [Anglo Saxon]The original monster story, in the original Old EnglishThe MabinogionCharlotte Guest, 1877 — The Original Red Book.
Modern Fantasy
The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser [1596]
Stories from the Faerie QueeneThe Works of Lord DunsanyEdward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, 1905-22 — Lord Dunsany paved the way for Tolkien with his delightful internally consistent fantasy worlds.The Wood Beyond the WorldWilliam Morris, 1894 — The Wood Beyond the World is one of Morris' masterpieces which he originally published using hand-set type.The Worm OuroborosE. R. Eddison, 1922 — "The greatest and most convincing writer of 'invented worlds' that I have read"