This is a letter in response to Luke Bailey's column regarding the Shire as an ideal economic model. Being a Brit and a Tolkien nut myself, I thought I would provide you with a couple of insights that you appeared to be lacking based on your article.
Hobbits were modeled on Englishmen (specifically rural Englishmen), which means the Shire, in essence, is rural England — at least the area near Oxford where he lived. So the economy that you spoke of as being part of a "world that never truly existed" actually did.
It was the agrarian economy of central England in the 1930s that Tolkien was familiar with. I have never actually read this anywhere, but I simply know it in my heart to be true — hobbits represent rural Englishmen. I grew up in rural southern England, and all the marks of the truth of what I am saying were in the community where I grew up.
So our modern economy is simply the evolution of what has happened from then to create what we have today.
Peter Colverson
Gainesville resident
