28th October 2026
Tolkien and the Origins of Fantasy Literature
This year’s LMH Library Exhibition is “There and Back Again: A Journey to the Origins of Fantasy Literature”
Written by Jamie Fishwick-Ford, LMH Librarian
Every year, the LMH librarians put a new exhibition in the library display cases – mainly to show our students the range of antiquarian books we have available for them to use for their studies, but also to show off our collections to alumni and other guests. As well as these exhibitions, we also do talks for our students, particularly 2nd year Historians thinking about dissertation topics, and other students who approach us asking questions about rare books. And we do talks about the library collections to students on the LMH Oxford Summer Programmes. This year, after doing a talk for the Summer Programme course on ‘Oxford and the Rise of Fantasy Literature’, I thought it might make a good exhibition.
Whilst the talk went chronologically, I decided that the exhibition would go in reverse chronological order, beginning by considering the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and then exploring works that influenced him or that contained other themes which have resurfaced in modern fantasy. As such, I decided to call it “There and Back Again: A Journey to the Origins of Fantasy Literature”.
The exhibition begins, as so much of modern Fantasy Literature does, with J.R.R. Tolkien. We have a wonderful collection of Tolkien's works at LMH, thanks in particular to donations of first editions by Dame Lucy Sutherland, former Principal of LMH, and Dr Margery Ord, an LMH Fellow and Tutor. We also have his first published work, A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) – which nicely illustrates his duality, as both a fantasy author and an Oxford academic. Of course, those two natures were not separate, but both sprang from a deep love of languages, whether studying them academically or inventing them for his legendarium – Tolkien wrote “The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse”.
Tolkien’s works came to define the modern high fantasy genre: thick multi-volume novels about imagined worlds, illustrated with maps, and filled with epic journeys, dramatic battles, non-human species, and powerful magic. The rest of the exhibition explores all those aspects individually, showing that none of them were invented by Tolkien – but he pulled them together, and his great success made his influence on later works inescapable.
The famous maps of Middle Earth, made by his son Christopher, are a key feature of Tolkien’s books, but maps of imagined places definitely did not originate with Tolkien – as shown below in Jonathan Swift’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World; by Lemuel Gulliver (first published 1726, with this 1768 edition given to LMH by E. H. N. Wilde). Many fantasy stories revolve around travels to or through imagined lands, a theme which has resonated in stories throughout history – from Swift to More’s Utopia, Dante’s Divine Comedy, or even Homer’s Odyssey.
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World (1726)
Modern fans of fantasy literature can come to know stories better than the people who wrote them – LMH alumna Barbara Strachey made an atlas of the Lord of the Rings, plotting out the paths travelled by the Fellowship in great detail, and published it as Journeys of Frodo (1981). This was one of the first books about Tolkien’s world not written by him or his son, and it is accompanied with a fantastically detailed commentary explaining the times she has corrected Tolkien. We are delighted to own the original manuscript drafts of the book, given to the LMH Archives.
Journeys of Frodo (1981)
Turning from maps to multi-volume novels and dramatic battles, the exhibition looks at the rise of novels and romances in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, particularly historical and gothic stories. With the current popularity of ‘romantasy’ (a genre mixing romance, fantasy, and gothic elements), it is wonderful to show one of its forerunners,Ann Radcliffe's four-volume Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). This is one of our most recent gifts, from the library of LMH fellows Elizabeth MacKenzie and Patricia Kean at Latchford House. In the exhibition we also show some historical novels by Walter Scott and Charlotte Mary Yonge – as precursors of fantasy novels drawing on historical themes, but also illustrating how even ‘historical’ settings often reflect the views of their authors rather than being a completely accurate view of history, from Walter Scott’s Scottish patriotism to Charlotte Mary Yonge’s High Church Anglican morality. The same trend, of course, continues in modern fantasy.
Next, the exhibition turns from historical novels to actual historical sources – looking at books about magic and early science, and the sometimes blurry line between the two. And so we display witch-hunters handbooks', botanical books, and a wonderful bestiary, Edward Topsell’s The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes (1607, given to LMH by alumna and folklorist Katharine Mary Briggs, shown below). The herbal and the bestiary are particularly fascinating, mixing things that we would recognise as scientific fact with things that we would see as myth and legend. Fantasy literature is, in many ways, an attempt to return to a Late Medieval or Renaissance mindset, a world where there wasn’t a clear divide between fact and fiction, superstition and science – a time when mysteries existed.
Looking even earlier, the stories of King Arthur are a great example of an early fantasy story which still resonates today and has deep influences on the genre. The exhibition looks at the Mabinogion and Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, which are very recognisable fantasy tales, but also at King Arthur’s appearance in John Stow’s Annales of England (1605, gift of Elizabeth Levett). Stow attempts to discern fact from fiction, but still includes Arthur in his history book – we might draw the line elsewhere these days!
The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes (1607)
Finally, the exhibition looks at two literary classics featuring angels and demons, which took inspiration from Biblical and Apocryphal stories – Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Divine Comedy (an Opere del Divino Poeta Dante from 1512, given to us by Lucy Ethel Willock). Just as Milton and Dante took influences from earlier works and adapted them to create their masterpieces, modern fantasy draws inspiration from all the books mentioned in this exhibition and remakes them for a contemporary audience.
The exhibition is available in the library for LMH members to browse at any time. Any alumni, members of other colleges, or external visitors who want to see the exhibition should email librarian@lmh.ox.ac.uk to book an appointment, which will normally be during weekdays 9.30 to 12.30 or 2 to 4.30.
