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The Items shown on this page are posted { FOR SALE } at the Auctions sites indicated
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Value: $Unknown
Defending the integrity of the literature he called "fairy-stories" against proponents of those varieties of literature that seek to represent "real life," J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, "Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about topics other than jailers and prison walls?" Had he wished to write of "jailers and prison-walls," Tolkien could have found abundant material in his own life to provide plots and incidents for novels in the mold of Oliver Twist, or, in a more modern vein, for ironic little stories of men who lead lives of quiet desperation. Orphaned at an early age, dependent for his education on scholarships and the support of a benefactor, kept for several years from association with the woman he loved by the wishes of that same benefactor, and graduated from university just in time to participate in the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest tragedies of World War I, Tolkien had opportunities early and often to observe and to experience the depressing, frustrating, and limiting possibilities of modern life as well as the joyous, fulfilling, and liberating. But Tolkien's imaginative faculty was not inclined toward the careful recreation of the world around him or the slow building up of detail that creates recognizably real characters
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