Tolkien's View: Windows into his World contains a number of selected essays by Professor J.S. Ryan, for their most part originally published over three decades from the 1960s to the 1990s, on the theme of J.R.R. Tolkien and his works. Having himself studied under Professor Tolkien at the time of the publication of his masterwork The Lord of the Rings, Professor J.S. Ryan is uniquely well-placed to comment on some aspects of Tolkien's academic environment in Oxford, the subject matters J.R.R. Tolkien studied and brooded upon in his regular professional work and the people he personally knew, cherished and was influenced by as a student and then as a professor of Old and Middle English, a writer and a person.