Tolkien’s Letters Reveal a Cantankerous Conservative at Odds with His Own Work

Tolkien’s correspondence shows an erudite but misanthropic author who was perpetually behind on commitments and harsh toward translators, publishers, and fellow humans. Politically, he favored hereditary monarchy over democracy and supported Franco’s regime in Spain. His reactionary views clash ironically with readers who found progressive themes in Middle-earth, revealing the gap between author and interpretation.

Orwell easily opposed the Nazis as a socialist modernist, using his writing for propaganda and later warning against totalitarianism. But Tolkien and Lewis faced a dilemma: both medievalists interested in paganism and mythology—the same sources the Nazis were exploiting. This forced them to retreat into coded fantasy worlds, possibly harboring syncretist beliefs they couldn’t openly express.