The Shire

Figure 2. From Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954). The Shire [Map].
The Fellowship of the Ring. London, UK: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.

The Shire is the home of the Hobbits. Far removed from the notice and concerns of Men or Elves or Dwarves, the Shire is “[in] some ways… based on Tolkien’s memory of… rural and village life in the English West Midlands around the turn of the twentieth century” (Stanton, 2006, p. 607).

Figure 3. Adapted from Tolkien, J. R. R. (2012). The realm of Middle-earth [Map]. The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary One-Volume Edition. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

In all four Farthings of the Shire (i.e. North, South, East, and West), “…the topography of the Shire is pleasingly varied but tame: hills, brooks and rivers, woodlands and meadows” (Stanton, 2006, p. 607). Thus having never engaged in industry, the Hobbits base their economy solely on agricultural products.

It is this peaceful and pastoral lifestyle that sets them apart from all the other Peoples in Middle-earth (Stanton, 2006, p. 607).

Recommended Readings

Burger, D. A. (1986). The Shire: A Tolkien version of pastoral. In W. Coyle (Ed.), Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film, (pp. 149-54). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Huttar C.A. (1992). Tolkien, epic traditions, and Golden Age myths. In Filmer K. (Ed.), Twentieth-Century Fantasists, (pp. 92-107). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.