Sarah Schaefer
Universities of Wisconsin Fellow (2024-2025)
Associate Professor, Art History, UW–Milwaukee
A (More) Secret Vice: J. R. R. Tolkien and Illustration
Among the most popular authors of the twentieth century, J. R. R. Tolkien’s (1892–1973) visual art, produced throughout his lifetime and frequently reproduced in publications of and about his work, has long been recognized for its quality and inventiveness. My book project examines some of the largest (and least studied) bodies of Tolkien’s visual output—geological and botanical imagery, architecture, patterning and decoration, and diagrammatic renderings—and situates them within the histories of illustration, a field that has, like Tolkien’s work, only begun to receive serious scholarly attention. More broadly, this study demonstrates the limits of considering Tolkien’s work primarily in textual terms and the need to center the visual and material in relation to the “written.”
Sarah Schaefer is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century print media, illustration, and religious material culture. She is the author of Gustave Doré and the Modern Biblical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2021) and the co-curator of the 2022 exhibition J. R. R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript (Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University).
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