The Book That Gave Tolkien Dragons

This is the third in a short series exploring the early life of J. R. R. Tolkien and the influences that formed his imagination—especially the role of his mother and the books she chose. See here if you would like to read One and Two.

There is a moment, early in Tolkien’s life, that is easy to pass over—and yet it explains so much about those years with Mabel and his brother Hilary in the little cottage at Sarehole.

He remembered it years later.

In his biography, Tolkien recalls those days and notes that there were certain books he did not love—such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Treasure Island—because they did not summon to his imagination other worlds in the way the fairy tales did.

“But most of all he found delight in the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, especially the Red Fairy Book, for tucked away in its closing pages was the best story he had ever read.

This was the tale of Sigurd who slew the dragon Fafnir.

This was the strange and powerful tale set in the nameless North.

Whenever he read it Ronald found it absorbing.

‘I desired dragons with a profound desire,’ he said long afterwards. ‘Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.’”
—Tolkien: A Biography, p. 24

Here is a young boy who reads and rereads a story—and desires dragons with a profound desire.

It was never the dragons themselves.

It was the place from which the dragons came. Not the danger, but the world in which such things could exist. A world where courage is required, where evil must be faced, where something greater than safety calls the heart forward.

Mabel Tolkien could not have guessed the future that would grow from such moments with the book she gave Ronald.  

But she did something important. She placed within reach the kind of book in which such moments could occur.

It was the beginning of the awakening of Tolkien's moral imagination.

Setting before him books that carry danger and beauty together. Books that awaken longing and joy.

The moral imagination is not a set of ideas, but a kind of sight. It is the ability to recognize that some worlds are richer than others—and to love the one that is more beautiful, even when it asks something of us.

These are the kinds of stories gathered in Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books. Full of depth and strangeness, beauty and meaning—stories that open a larger world rather than explain it away.

This is why we are bringing two of Lang's books into print, beginning this summer with The Blue Fairy Book, and later The Red Fairy Book. These are books Tolkien loved. Each will include thoughtful annotations and a guide for parents, and together they will form part of the Moral Imagination Series.

In its pages, a child may encounter something unexpected—something that stirs the heart before it can be explained.Years later, perhaps, they will remember. Not only the story—but the world it revealed. And they will find that their own world has grown larger, richer, and more beautiful for having entered it.

These books belong to the same world known to C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and George MacDonald— A world where choices matter and beauty and goodness are inseparable.

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A Gathering Around a Story from The Blue Fairy Book

This summer, I am considering gathering a small group of mothers to read and reflect together on these kinds of books.

Before I plan anything further, I will host a single afternoon conversation—simply to read one story together from The Blue Fairy Book and see what we discover.

No preparation. No pressure. Just a story, and the chance to notice what awakens as we read.

If this draws you, you are warmly invited to join me. I’ll share a few details in the coming days. If you would like to hear sooner, you’re welcome to reply in comments below.