Meditation and mosaic: two landmark Tolkien studies

I wrote this review for the Times Literary Supplement, which made judicious but substantial edits before publishing in its 19 February 2026 issue. For those who want a deeper dive, here’s the uncut version.

• Michael D.C. Drout, The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation (W.W. Norton, 2025)

• Giuseppe Pezzini, Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation (Cambridge University Press, 2025)

As Gandalf tries to thread a route through the mines of Moria, Aragorn assures their jittery companions that the wizard can find his way better than the cats of Queen Berúthiel. Those cats have now strolled into two significant new literary studies on Tolkien, helping to steer remarkably diverse courses through his labyrinthine imagination.

The Tower and the Ruin explores the qualities that make Tolkien’s Middle-earth writings so much more credible than most fantasy works – and most modern literature, the book suggests. Such views may not be surprising in a medievalist like author Michael Drout, who teaches and writes on Beowulf. But he seeks to understand why The Lord of the Rings feels like so much more than a book – why reading Tolkien has such an ‘experiential quality’.

Drout invites us to think of how we engage personally with The Lord of the Rings and other writings, leading the way by describing how it became part of his own personal and family life. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is a cultural but also a social phenomenon: reading his books can be both an individual rite of passage and part of a family bond. A ribbon of memoir runs in and out of the literary argumentation in The Tower and the Ruin.