ARTICLE
RESOURCE | Tree and Leaf
Tree and Leaf contains On Fairy-stories — J.R.R. Tolkien’s most famous and most important essay, which defined his conception of fantasy as a literary form and its relation to faith and myth — and Leaf by Niggle — a poignant and haunting story about an artist on a curious journey often seen as an allegory of the writer’s own process and life.
Tolkien, beloved throughout the world as the creator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, a fellow of Pembroke College, and a fellow of Merton College until his retirement in 1959. His chief interest was the linguistic aspects of the early English written tradition, but even as he studied these classics he was creating a set of his own.
