Did Tolkien Ever Use the Phrase ‘Mythology for England’?

Q: Did Tolkien Ever Use the Phrase ‘Mythology for England’?

ANSWER: This question is an amalgam of questions people ask almost continually. The issue of whether Tolkien described The Lord of the Rings as “a mythology for England” has been debated among fans for decades – and numerous credible Tolkien scholars have done their best to explain the distinction between Humphrey Carpenter’s characterization in Letter No. 131 (to Milton Waldman) and Tolkien’s own description of The Book of Lost Tales in that letter.

However, to answer this question more directly, did J.R.R. Tolkien ever use the phrase (or speak of) [a] “mythology for England”, YES and NO.

I have always opposed the idea that The Lord of the Rings was Tolkien’s intended mythology for England. Some people say my arguments have been excessive or brutal. Sorry for that. There have been days when I’ve given tit for tat.

However, I have often acknowledged that The Lord of the Rings is an English mythology, in the sense that Tolkien couldn’t help but put his own experiences and ideas (as an English man, in his view) into the fiction he created. As writers we don’t create – we reorganize what we (think we) know into something hopefully interesting, informative, maybe even entertaining. Tolkien called this process subcreation. Orson Scott Card had a fair amount to say on the topic when he taught science fiction writing. Other well-known authors have said similar things.

So, yes, The Lord of the Rings is English and that’s a well-established, not-worth-debating fact. It probably wouldn’t be half as entertaining or interesting if Tolkien had attempted to make it German or Italian (given his knowledge of and experience with German and Italian history, language, and culture). He was certainly a very well-educated European man, but in his heart he was English (not British) and he thought of his world in that way, regardless of how others thought of the same world.

But Tolkien Did Speak of ‘The Mythology’

In fact, he wrote about multiple mythologies. He acknowledged that The Book of Lost Tales was a failed attempt to construct an English mythology, something that would be suitable for ancient England based on what he could extrapolate from modern English’s words, colloquialisms, folklore, and such. He simply didn’t write (much of) it in Old English. He wrote it in a pseudo-archaic modern(-ish) English. But the brownies and pixies and fays and landscape and some place-names in The Book of Lost Tales are English, intended to represent what he thought (at the time) could be a linguistic representation of (an imaginary but coherent) source for modern English folklore and (some) “fairy stories”.

That said, he went on to speak of the world The Hobbit as “the mythology” and then even later the world of The Lord of the Rings (incorporating through a cleverish retro-fit The Hobbit) as “the mythology”. And he called his body of stories the Legendarium, but not in the usual traditional sense of Legendarium (that is, there was no specific book in which all these stories were collected – it was collective in his thoughts and intentions).

He wanted to publish everything in a coherent form. When modern scholars speak (or write) of Tolkien’s Legendarium, it’s not always clear what they mean – or each one defines the legendarium in their own terms, and those terms collectively mean different things (the published stories, the stories he wanted to publish, the stories he attempted to publish, etc.).

The Legendarium is not really “the mythology” because there was no single mythology. As Christopher Tolkien put it, there were phases of the mythology, but even that inadequately described what his father attempted to do. J.R.R. Tolkien began new projects with no real intention of completing the old projects. He borrowed ideas from himself, not with the sense of bringing the old projects forward for completion, but with the sense of telling stories he thought interesting enough to be told.

Of course, there was one notable exception to what I just wrote. Given the success of The Hobbit Tolkien hoped to published The Silmarillion. But once that was shot down he played a clever game. He gave his publishers what they wanted (a sequel to The Hobbit) and used that as leverage to promise what he wanted (a published Silmarillion). He painted both himself and his publishers into a corner because in 1956 he didn’t have a Silmarillion that was compatible with either The Hobbit (which had borrowed extensively from the Silmarillion he had in the 1930s) or The Lord of the Rings.

The world of The Silmarillion had to be expanded and brought forward. The stories of The Silmarillion had to be expanded and brought forward. So this older “mythology” had to be upgraded, reinvented, and merged with his newer mythologies to create The One Mythology that unfortunately he was never able to complete and which didn’t see publication in any real form in his lifetime.

But neither did Christopher Tolkien succeed in creating that One Mythology his father sought. He gave us A Silmarillion, not THE Silmarillion his father wanted to create. And Christopher devoted decades of his life to explaining away his mistakes and poor choices (as he saw them, though the readers often disagreed with him on the quality of the finished product).

What we think of as the Legendarium includes Christopher’s work – which is appropriate. But Tolkien’s Legendarium is not a traditional legendarium (a single work, or a single collection of works). And even J.R.R. Tolkien in his most inventive, creative, forward-looking self didn’t imagine what he thought of as the legendarium didn’t foresee what everything would become.

We rather gave ourselves a legendarium that redefines the old concept. But I digress.

Where Did Tolkien Speak of ‘The Mythology’?

Here are some citations where Tolkien wrote about “the mythology”. This is by no means an exhaustive list of citations but you can see how he quickly came to identify The Lord of the Rings with his “mythology”. Letter No. 180 has occasionally been cited as “proof” that The Lord of the Rings was “the mythology for England”, but it is provided without the context of whatever letter to which he was replying, and I feel (strongly) that the language of the letter implies that Mr. Thompson had seen (or been told about) a Silmarillion draft.

Letter No. 13 Dated 13 May 1937, this letter was sent to C.A. Furth at Allen & Unwin: “I have some ‘pictures’ in my drawer, but though they represent scenes from the mythology on the outskirts of which the Hobbit had his adventures, they do not really illustrate his story.”

Letter No. 15 Dated 31 August 1937, this letter was sent to Allen & Unwin: “I have tried both. In any case – except for the runes (Anglo-Saxon) and the dwarf-names (Icelandic), neither used with antiquarian accuracy, and both regretfully substituted to avoid abstruseness for the genuine alphabets and names of the mythology into which Mr Baggins intrudes – I am afraid my professional knowledge is not directly used. The magic and mythology and assumed ‘history’ and most of the names (e.g. the epic of the Fall of Gondolin) are, alas!, drawn from unpublished inventions, known only to my family, Miss Griffiths and Mr Lewis.”

Letter No. 19 Dated 16 December 1937, this letter was sent to Stanley Unwin: “But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils are in my heart.”

Letter No. 25 Dated February 1938, this letter was sent to the editor of The Observer: “As for the rest of the tale it is, as the Habit suggests, derived from (previously digested) epic, mythology, and fairy-story – not, however, Victorian in authorship, as a rule to which George Macdonald is the chief exception.”

Letter No. 131 Dated late 1951, this letter was sent to Collins publisher Milton Waldman and it describes The Lord of the Rings (among other topics): “On the side of mere narrative device, this is, of course, meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the ‘gods’ of higher mythology, which can yet be accepted – well, shall we say baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity.”

Letter No. 156 Dated 4 November 1954, this draft letter was written to Robert Murray, SJ: “Why they should take such a form is bound up with the ‘mythology’ of the ‘angelic’ Powers of the world of this fable…But in this ‘mythology’ all the ‘angelic’ powers concerned with this world were capable of many degrees of error and failing between the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron, and the fainéance of some of the other higher powers or ‘gods’.”

Ibid.: “But the nature of the gods’ knowledge of the history of the World, and their part in making it (before it was embodied or made ‘real’) – whence they drew their knowledge of the future, such as they had, is pan of the major mythology.”

Ibid.: “There they became the Númenóreans, the Kings of Men. They were given a triple span of life – but not elvish ‘immortality’ (which is not eternal, but measured by the duration in time of Earth); for the point of view of this mythology is that ‘mortality’ or a short span, and ‘immortality’ or an indefinite span was part of what we might call the biological and spiritual nature of the Children of God, Men and Elves (the firstborn) respectively, and could not be altered by anyone (even a Power or god), and would not be altered by the One, except perhaps by one of those strange exceptions to all rules and ordinances which seem to crop up in the history of the Universe, and show the Finger of God, as the one wholly free Will and Agent.”

Ibid.: “So Sauron had recourse to guile. He submitted, and was carried off to Númenor as a prisoner-hostage. But he was of course a ‘divine’ person (in the terms of this mythology; a lesser member of the race of Valar) and thus far too powerful to be controlled in this way.”

Letter No. 163: Dated 7 June 1955, this letter was sent to W.H. Auden: “A lot of labour was naturally involved, since I had to make a linkage with The Hobbit; but still more with the background mythology.”

Letter No. 165 (preamble): “On 5 June 1955 in the New York Times Review, the columnist Harvey Breit devoted part of his
weekly article ‘In and Out of Books’ to an account of Tolkien and his writings. It included this passage: ‘What, we asked Dr [sic] Tolkien, makes you tick? Dr T., who teaches at Oxford when he isn’t writing novels, has this brisk reply: “I don’t tick. I am not a machine. (If I did tick, I should have no views on it, and you had better ask the winder.) My work did not ‘evolve’ into a serious work. It started like that. The so-called ‘children’s story’ [The Hobbit] was a fragment, torn out of an already existing mythology…”

Letter No. 165 (Diplomat addendum): Dated October 1966: “This business began so far back that it might be said to have begun at birth. Somewhere about six years old I tried to write some verses on a dragon about which I now remember nothing except that it contained the expression a green great dragon and that I remained puzzled for a very long time at being told that this should be great green. But the mythology (and associated languages) first began to take shape during the 1914-18 war. The Fall of Gondolin (and the birth of Eärendil) was written in hospital and on leave after surviving the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The kernel of the mythology, the matter of Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren, arose from a small woodland glade filled with ‘hemlocks’ (or other white umbellifers) near Roos on the Holderness peninsula – to which I occasionally went when free from regimental duties while in the Humber Garrison in 1918.”

Letter No. 180 Dated 14 January 1856, this draft was for a letter to Mr. Thompson: “Having set myself a task, the
arrogance of which I fully recognized and trembled at: being precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own: it is a wonderful thing to be told that I have succeeded, at least with those who have still the undarkened heart and mind.”

Ibid.: “It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that ‘legends’ depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the ‘legends’ which it conveys by tradition. (For example, that the Greek mythology depends far more on the marvellous aesthetic of its language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its content than people realize, though of course it depends on both. And vice versa. Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.)”

Letter No. 181 Dated probably January or February, this draft was for a letter intended for Michael Straight: “There is, of course, a mythological structure behind this story. It was actually written first, and may now perhaps be in part published. It is, I should say, a ‘monotheistic but “sub-creational” mythology’. There is no embodiment of the One, of God, who indeed remains remote, outside the World, and only directly accessible to the Valar or Rulers.”

Ibid. “The passage over Sea is not Death. The ‘mythology’ is Elf-centred. According to it there was at first an actual Earthly Paradise, home and realm of the Valar, as a physical part of the earth. There is no ’embodiment’ of the Creator anywhere in this story or mythology. Gandalf is a ‘created’ person; though possibly a spirit that existed before in the physical world. His function as a ‘wizard’ is an angelos or messenger from the Valar or Rulers: to assist the rational creatures of Middle-earth to resist Sauron, a power too great for them unaided. But since in the view of this tale & mythology Power – when it dominates or seeks to dominate other wills and minds (except by the assent of their reason) – is evil, these ‘wizards’ were incarnated in the life-forms of Middle-earth, and so suffered the pains both of mind and body.”

Letter No. 182 Dated 1956 (estimated), this letter was sent to Anne Barrett, Houghton Mifflin Co. (Tolkien’s American publisher): “I shall certainly now, if I am allowed, publish the parts of the great history that was written first—and rejected. But the (to me v. surprising) success of The Lord of the Rings will probably cause that rejection to be reconsidered. Though I do not think it would have the appeal of the L. R. – no hobbits ! Full of mythology, and elvishness, and all that ‘heigh stile’ (as Chaucer might say), which has been so little to the taste of many reviewers.”

Letter No. 200 Dated 25 June 1957, this letter was sent to Major R. Bowen: “I note your remarks about Sauron. He was always de-bodied when vanquished. The theory, if one can dignify the modes of the story with such a term, is that he was a spirit, a minor one but still an ‘angelic’ spirit. According to the mythology of these things that means that, though of course a creature, he belonged to the race of intelligent beings that were made before the physical world, and were permitted to assist in their measure in the making of it.”

Ibid.: “I am sorry if this all seems dreary and ‘pompöse’. But so do all attempts to ‘explain’ the images and events of a mythology. Naturally the stories come first. But it is, I suppose, some test of the consistency of a mythology as such, if it is capable of some son of rational or rationalized explanation.”

Letter No. 211 Dated 14 October 1958, this letter was sent to Rhona Beare: “Pterodactyl. Yes and no. I did not intend the steed of the Witch-King to be what is now called a ‘pterodactyl’, and often is drawn (with rather less shadowy evidence than lies behind many monsters of the new and fascinating semi-scientific mythology of the ‘Prehistoric’). But obviously it is pterodactylic and owes much to the new mythology, and its description even provides a sort of way in which it could be a last survivor of older geological eras.”

Letter No. 212 (draft addendum for 211): “I suppose a difference between this Myth and what may be perhaps called Christian mythology is this. In the latter the Fall of Man is subsequent to and a consequence (though not a necessary consequence) of the ‘Fall of the Angels’ : a rebellion of created free-will at a higher level than Man; but it is not clearly held (and in many versions is not held at all) that this affected the ‘World’ in its nature: evil was brought in from outside, by Satan. In this Myth the rebellion of created free-will precedes creation of the World (Eä); and Eä has in it, subcreatively introduced, evil, rebellions, discordant elements of its own nature already when the Let it Be was spoken.”

Conclusion

Just as Tolkien’s fiction evolved through experimentation, his conceptualization of the mythology evolved over time as he added to it, revised it, and considered what should and should not be considered part of it. Not every story Christopher Tolkien published in The History of Middle-earth (and maybe Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth) was or would have been retained by JRRT in his growing awareness of what he thought of as this mythology.

It was not a “mythology for England” but clearly was a mythology built from English things (and non-English things), intended for an audience who would appreciate “more about hobbits” (as Stanley Unwin put it in 1937) but also (hopefully) a compelling story rooted in a complex, deep mythological world that felt as real as any mythological world could.

In Letter 181 Tolkien also wrote: “There is no special reference to England in the ‘Shire’ – except of course that as an Englishman brought up in an ‘almost rural’ village of Warwickshire on the edge of the prosperous bourgeoisie of Birmingham (about the time of the Diamond Jubilee!) I take my models like anyone else – from such ‘life’ as I know.” This is an important point, one often buried or deliberately ignored by people who argue for identifying LoTR as the “mythology for England”. The Shire is English because that is the model Tolkien used – it was the kind of world he knew. But it was not intended to BE England.

I think when you acknowledge the differentiations Tolkien made himself between what he wanted, intended, and created, you should see that he didn’t think of a “mythology for England” the same way that many modern readers do. And many Tolkien scholars have taken this point of view as well.

For more on what the scholars of academia have to say about this topic, see Dr. Luke Shelton’s article Why Calling Tolkien’s Work “A Mythology for England” is Wrong and Misleading.

See also

Was Kortirion Supposed To Be Part of the Middle-earth Mythology?

Did. J.R.R. Tolkien Think The Lord of the Rings Was ‘English’?

Middle-earth Revised, Again (Classic Essay)

Tolkien’s Time Machine, When Literary Worlds Collide (Classic Essay)

An Interview with John Garth (for insights into Tolkien’s early fiction)

An Interview with Douglas Charles Kane (for insights into how The Silmarillion evolved over time)

Did Tolkien’s Legendarium Have Anything to Do with the Occult?

What Is J.R.R. Tolkiens’s Legendarium?

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