MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
The Shaping of Middle-earth's Maker: Influences on the Life and Literature of J.R.R. Tolkien is a short collection of essays by J.S. Ryan, published by the American Tolkien Society in 1992. John Sprott Ryan, born in New Zealand, studied under Tolkien at Merton College, Oxford, in the 1950s, and spent most of his teaching career at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia.
In this volume of some fifty pages Ryan, the author of the early study Tolkien: Cult or Culture?, gathers essays on the influences that shaped Tolkien's life and his fiction. He went on to publish two more collections on Tolkien with Walking Tree, in 2009 and 2013.
Essays by J.S. Ryan, one of Tolkien's former Oxford students, on the influences behind Tolkien's life and work.
