MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
Tolkien: Man and Myth, subtitled A Literary Life, is a study of Tolkien by Joseph Pearce, an English writer known for his biographies of Catholic authors such as G. K. Chesterton. It was published by HarperCollins in 1998.
Pearce reads Tolkien's life and work through his Catholic faith, from his mother's conversion and early death to his part in C. S. Lewis's conversion and the Inklings. He argues that Middle-earth has a deeply Catholic moral structure even without explicit religion, and that Tolkien saw his stories as a way into reality rather than an escape from it. The book was one of the first to put Tolkien's Catholicism at the centre of the discussion.
A literary life of Tolkien that puts his Catholic faith at the heart of his life and of Middle-earth.
