pTHE BOOK OF WONDER AND THE LAST BOOK OF WONDER - A BOOK THAT INSPIRED TOLKIEN. With original illustrations. THE PROFESSOR'S BOOKSHELF 8pp Lord Dunsany wrote more than eighty books during his career in the early 20th Century. Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, enjoyed reading Dunsany's works - a fact which he acknowledged numerous times in his letters. Tolkien was twenty years old in 1912, when 'The Book of Wonder', illustrated by Sidney Sime, first appeared in British bookshops and libraries. The short stories in this book are Gothic in style, poetic, mysterious and dream-like - often nightmarish, horrific and almost hallucinatory. Numerous accoutrements of fantasy are found within the realms of 'The Book of Wonder and The Last Book of Wonder', as they are in Middle-earth talismans, precious metals, jewels, signalling horns, dark, dangerous woods infested with evil spiders and more. A red, glowing, all-seeing eye opens above Dunsany's frightening