Precisa, dettagliata, approfondita, questa biografia permette di conoscere Tolkien come studioso e come uomo, prima che come creatore di mondi fantastici.
Un ottimo punto di partenza per chi voglia andare oltre le opere, verso la persona.

I recently re-read the Hobbit and looked forward to knowing more about Tolkien. In that respect, Xander came through for me, as I knew only a few elementary facts about him prior to reading the book. Tolkien's life is superficially reviewed from his birth to his death but with not much more information than could be gleaned from a reasonably good Wikipedia article. With a title like this a prospective reader would have reason to believe that the author had uncovered much new material that would substantially add to what is already known about one of the the twentieth century's most famous writers. His material comes from secondary sources with the exception of published letters from Tolkien and transcripts of interviews.

Xander might be forgiven for his lack of initiative if he had presented a comprehensive synthesis of existing material. Unfortunately much of the book is taken up by references to Tolkien's Middle Earth canon and require a familiarity with it akin to a Southern Baptist minister's knowledge of the New Testament. The narrative proceeds in a herky-jerky motion for this reason. This is the product of someone who clearly loves his subject and this book, with some more editing, would be a very good companion for book clubs reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I enjoyed the book. It reads well and it doesn't feel lengthy or boring. However, it felt more like a dissertation than a biography... and it didn't bring anything new to the table. If this is meant for Tolkien fans, then rest assure they have already read Tolkien's biography by H. Carpenter (which is as thorough as possibly). Having said that, true fans will read this book all the same but they are likely to get a bit disappointed by it.

As someone who is a huge fan of the Hobbit and Lord of the Ring trilogy books and movies and Samurian, I had to request and the read this! This is more than a biography of JRR Tolkien, it is also about his innermost thinking about the worlds in these books. I hope he would have been proud of the movie adaptations because Peter Jackson tried to hold true the books as much as possible.

This is a must read for any fan of his books regardless of you liked in them I was unable to put this down because of all the above reasons. I highly recommend this to bring magic and fantasy back in to the reading of these books. I liked this so much, I am getting a hard copy at publishing.

Thank you to the Pen & Sword White Owl for granting my wish and giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. As well as Netgalley for having this biography of JRR Tolkein by Jesse Xander, who is also an obsessed fan of his work. I really appreciate this!

Available: 2/2/21

I really liked this biography! It was incredibly thorough for such a short book. I am a big fan of The Lord of the Rings and have read most of Tolkien's works. I also thought that I knew a lot about his life already; he was a linguist like me, so I always admired him (yes, I am one of those fans who's spent hours studying Sindarin and Quenyan). But I learned a lot about Tolkien's childhood and personal life. This was obviously written by a fan of Tolkien's works, which makes a big difference in my opinion. It was simultaneously respectful towards Tolkien and his creations while also taking a not-often seen view of some of Tolkien's less-desirable qualities, such as possible antisemitism and racism. I also really appreciated the details about his wife Edith and friendships with other writers and academics. A great book that I highly recommend, if a little dense at times. It read more like a dissertation than a biography, which is the reason for 4 instead of 5 stars.

I received an advance copy of, The Real J.R.R. Tolkien, by Jesse Xander. I really wanted to like this book, but I found it dull and boring.