Farmer Giles of Ham

Farmer Giles of Ham is a comic medieval fable written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937 and published in 1949. The story describes the encounters between Farmer Giles and a wily dragon named Chrysophylax, and how Giles manages to use these to rise from humble beginnings to rival the king of the land. It is cheerfully anachronistic and light-hearted, set in Britain in an imaginary period of the Dark Ages, and featuring mythical creatures, medieval knights, and primitive firearms. It is only tangentially connected with the author's Middle-earth legendarium: both were originally intended as essays in "English mythology". The book was originally illustrated by Pauline Baynes. The story has appeared with other works by Tolkien in omnibus editions, including The Tolkien Reader and Tales from the Perilous Realm. Tolkien dedicated Farmer Giles of Ham to Cyril Hackett Wilkinson (1888–1960), a don he knew at Oxford University. Tolkien gives the reason for this dedication in a letter to the publisher, dated 5 July 1947:

[Farmer Giles of Ham] was, in fact, written to order, to be read to the Lovelace Society at Worcester College; and was read to them at a sitting. For that reason I should like to put an inscription to C. H. Wilkinson on a fly-leaf, since it was Col. Wilkinson of that College who egged me to it ....