Islandia

Blurb

Islandia is a classic novel of utopian fiction by Austin Tappan Wright, a U. C. Berkeley Law School Professor. Written as a hobby over a long period, it was posthumously edited down by a third by his wife and daughter, and first published in hardcover by Farrar & Rinehart in 1942, eleven years after the author's 1931 death.
Islandia is a fully realized world which has drawn parallels to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, but it contains no magic, so it is much more a utopia than a standard fantasy.
The original Islandia was conceived by Wright while he was yet a small boy. Creating its civilization became his lifelong leisure occupation. The complete Islandia papers include "a detailed history ... complete with geography, genealogy, representations from its literature, language and culture.". The complete and never published version of Islandia can be found in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. A 61 page Introduction to Islandia by Basil Davenport was published along with the original novel in 1942.
The protagonist of the novel is an American named John Lang, who graduates from Harvard in 1910.