Squatter:
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I would like to point out how Tolkien's knowledge of English onomastics plays a part here. All of the names you will see on that map either are or could be real English place names. Newbury in Buckland bears the same name as a Berkshire market town, just as there really are places called Stock and Bucklebury. Michel Delving on the White Downs bears a striking resemblance to Micheldever near Winchester, which is also situated on some chalk downs, as are much of Berkshire and Oxfordshire. Tolkien holidayed more than once in Lyme Regis and Sidmouth, and there is an echo of the Devonshire town of Honiton in the centre of the narrative. All in all, for the English reader, this is supposed to be familiar territory
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This has always struck me - the 'Englishness' of the world of the Shire - to the extent that I was deeply surprised that readers from other countries could relate to the story at all. I can't help asking the (probably unanswerable)question, whether English readers understand/experience the Shire & its inhabitants differently from readers in other countries (as, I'd assume, a Russian would understand/experience, say, War & Peace differently to a non Russian). Or, if you're not English, are there parts of your country that feel like the Shire - Hope this is not too far off topic, but the effect of the opening chapter on myself (& like Squatter I'd include the map of the Shire in with the first chapter) is to place me in a world which I recognise - landscapes, placenames, personal names, etc - so that the sense of 'menace' is more intense & disturbing because its happening 'at home', as it were. If you come from a country/culture which is very diferent from the one described, do you identify with the Shire, or does it feel more 'alien' to you. Or to put it another way, does the Shire feel like the familiar & 'everday' world to everyone, or does it have the same kind of 'otherness' about it as Lorien or Gondor - does anyone start the book with the feeling that they're [I]already[/] in another world?