John Garth

John Garth is a journalist, editor, freelance writer, and poet known for authoring Tolkien and the Great War, the acclaimed account of J.R.R. Tolkien's experiences in World War I and correspondence of his circle, the Tea Club, Barrovian Society.

Garth studied at St. Anne's College in Oxford, England. Since the 1990's he has contributed to England's The Times, The Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Beast, and others, giving interviews of authors and writing book reviews.

In 2004, he received the Mythopoeic Society's Scholarship Award for his extensive research and work on Tolkien and the Great War. Since that year, Garth has given many talks and two school courses on Tolkien, and written many articles for Tolkien Studies, the Cormarë Series, the Tolkien Society's Mallorn journal, and other literature. In 2005 he joined the review panel of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship's journal Vinyar Tengwar. For his expertise on Tolkien, he is featured in many documentaries, and has lectured in places such as Marquette University.

Garth contributed the "Brief biography" section to the extensive study, A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien (2022).

In June 2022, Garth helped teach about The Return of the Shadow in a course of Corey Olsen's Mythgard Institute. He then participated in Homebrewed Christianity's online summit, "Interchanging Melodies: Tolkien, Religion, and Beyond" along with Robin Anne Reid and Lisa Coutras, and other Tolkien scholars.^[1]

He resides in Oxford, England.

Books & articles written[]

This list excludes book reviews.

Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (2003)
Tolkien at Exeter College: How an Oxford undergraduate created Middle-earth (booklet) (2014)
The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The places that inspired Middle-earth (2020)

"Frodo and the Great War" in The Lord of the Rings 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder (2006)
Many entries in Michael D. C. Drout's J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (2006)
"As under a green sea': visions of war in the Dead Marshes" in Myth and Magic: Art according to the Inklings (Cormarë Series, no. 14) (2007)
"Tolkien, Exeter College, and the Great War" in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration (Cormarë Series, no. 18) (2008)
"As under a green sea': visions of war in the Dead Marshes" in The Ring Goes Ever On: Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference (2008)
"Tolkien of the Many Names" (guest editorial) and "Views of a lost world" in Mallorn issue 48 (2009)
"Robert Quilter Gilson, T.C.B.S.: A Brief Life in Letters" in Tolkien Studies, vol. 8 (2011)
"The road from adaptation to invention': How Tolkien Came to the Brink of Middle-earth in 1914" in Tolkien Studies, Volume 11 (2014)
"The Undergraduate Tolkien" in Frances Cairncross' Exeter College: The First 700 Years (2013)
"When JRR Tolkien bet CS Lewis: the wager that gave birth to The Lord of the Rings", contributed to The Telegraph (2016)
Preface to José Manuel Ferrández-Bru's Uncle Curro: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Spanish Connection (2018)
"Tolkien and the Inklings", an opening essay to Catherine McIlwaine's Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth (2018)
"Ilu’s Music: The Creation of Tolkien's Creation Myth" (written in 2017^[2]) in Walking Tree Publishers' Sub-creating Arda (2019)
"The Chronology of Creation: How J.R.R. Tolkien Misremembered the Beginnings of his Mythology" in The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien (2022)