MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits is a study by Dimitra Fimi, a Greek scholar who now teaches fantasy and children's literature at the University of Glasgow. It was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008.
Fimi follows the growth of Tolkien's legendarium in the context of his life and times. She links his early elves to Victorian fairies and folklore, looks at his invented languages, then at his cosmology, the question of race in Middle-earth and its material culture, before ending with the shift from fairies to hobbits. The book won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies in 2010.
From Victorian fairies to hobbits: how Tolkien's legendarium grew out of the ideas of his time, including on race.