A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages -- J. R. R. Tolkien

<p> <strong>First ever critical study of Tolkien's little-known essay, which reveals how language invention shaped the creation of Middle-earth and beyond, to George R R Martin's <em>Game of Thrones</em>.</strong> </p><p>J.R.R. Tolkien's linguistic invention was a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a home and peoples to speak them. As Tolkien puts it in 'A Secret Vice', 'the making of language and mythology are related functions'.</p><p>In the 1930s, Tolkien composed and delivered two lectures, in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology. The second of these, the seminal Andrew Lang Lecture for 1938-9, 'On Fairy-Stories', which he delivered at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, is well known. But many years before, in 1931, Tolkien gave a talk to a literary society entitled 'A Hobby for the Home', where he unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art that he had both himself encountered and been involved with since his earliest childhood: 'the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement'.</p><p>This talk would be edited by Christopher Tolkien for inclusion as 'A Secret Vice' in <em>The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays</em> and serves as the principal exposition of Tolkien's art of inventing languages. This new critical edition, which includes previously unpublished note