Beginning with The Hobbit, a tale of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, a small, intelligent representative of a people whose simple underground houses have sometimes led me to suspect that they are remote relatives of rabbits, we pass from a fascinating child's tale to the great orchestra of The Lord of the Rings, in which a whole Secondary World is created and successfully sustained through three large volumes.
These are sure to remain Tolkien's life work; and are certainly destined to outlast our time. They stand as a major creative act, and it is not without significance that Tolkien tells us in Tree and Leaf that his full taste for fairy stories, using the term in its highest sense, arose during the war. He knows better than most that the adult mind has, if anything, greater need of fantasy than that of the child, greater need of consolation, and that if Christianity be a myth of secondary Creation, then it has permeated and enlightened and in some sense influenced the Primary World: the beautiful enchantment has become real. (p. 365)
