Extollager
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IMPORTANT BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON TOLKIEN AND MIDDLE-EARTH
I’m bound to miss something with this first posting, especially in the category of individual essays rather than essay collections, but herewith a sincere response to J. D. Worthington’s request:
Call for Reminiscences: The Earliest Academic Conferences on Tolkien
THE CORE COLLECTION
The seven books listed below are mandatory for anyone looking to explore and write about Tolkien and his work in the fantastic.
Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien and his selection of Tolkien’s letters. The current paperback edition of the Letters has a more thorough index than the original hardcover edition.
Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth in its current paperback edition is, I would say, the one most essential critical work, teeming with insight. His book on Tolkien as “author of the century” is not a rehash at a simplified level of the Road book, but a second major scholarly work.
Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond: Reader’s Companion and their two-volume set J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide are fabulous troves of information on Tolkien and his writings.
OTHER OUTSTANDING BOOKS
Verlyn Flieger’s three major studies Splintered Light, A Question of Time, and Interrupted Music; and the collection Green Suns and Faerie. The first two, at least, of these books perhaps belong in the “Core Collection.” I place them here only because they seem slightly less “essential” than the ones I have listed above.
Tom Shippey’s collection of his Tolkienian essays, Roots and Branches
The twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, and the History of the Hobbit, prepared by John Rateliff. Important if one wants to follow Tolkien’s exceedingly well-documented creative path through various drafts, including the revelation of various false trails (e.g. Strider originally being Trotter, a hobbit who wore wooden shoes). There are similar critical editions of Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham; Smith of Wootton Major; and On Fairy-Stories. Also Douglas Anderson's The Annotated Hobbit, second edition.
Verlyn Flieger and Carl Hostetter (eds.). Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth. Essay collection.
John Garth’s book about Tolkien’s service in World War I and the origins of Middle-earth
Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings, about the informal group that meant very much indeed to Tolkien, particularly during the composition of The Lord of the Rings; if you are interested in this topic, after reading Carpenter see Diana Glyer Pavlac’s The Company They Keep, perhaps also the Zaleskis’ book The Fellowship.
NOTEWORTHY BOOKS THAT MIGHT NOT BE NECESSARY
Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth, Revised Edition, will enhance one’s sense of Tolkien’s meticulous care in visualizing Middle-earth. One could also get Barbara Strachey’s Journeys of Frodo for the same reason. I have both, but would not be prepared to say yet whether one alone would be plenty and if so which.
Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle-earth: Tolkien’s World from A to Z is a useful reference book.
Clyde S. Kilby’s Tolkien and the Silmarillion appeared a year before Christopher Tolkien’s recension of his father’s great tales of the First and Second Ages. The Kilby book contains a chapter on the American professor’s sojourn in Oxford with Tolkien during summer 1966; it is one of the best evocations of the elderly Tolkien that we’ll ever have and helps one to understand why The Silmarillion had to be a posthumous construction. Kilby founded the Inklings collection at the Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton College, which is one of the top locations for Tolkien-related research, second only to Oxford and Marquette University in Milwaukee. The book was published in Wheaton, Ill., by Harold Shaw, 1976.
A second book with a superb reminiscence of Tolkien the man is the anthology edited by Joseph Pearce, Tolkien: A Celebration, with George Sayer’s (not Sayers’) piece “Recollections of J. R. R. Tolkien.”
Lobdell, Jared. England and Always OR Tolkien’s World of the Ring (I think that’s the title of the later edition). A good chapter on LOTR as an adventure story in the Edwardian mode, etc. (See also Nelson’s article on 19th- and 20th-century literary influences on Tolkien, below.)
BOOKS OF ESSAYS
There are numerous collections of scholarly essays on Tolkien and his fantasy. Among the best, I believe, are:
Isaacs and Zimbardo (ed.). Tolkien and the Critics.
Lobdell, Jared (ed.). Tolkien Compass. The original edition only was formerly essential because it printed Tolkien’s lengthy “Notes on the Nomenclature” -- but that valuable work is now in one of the Scull-Hammond volumes above. I have the original edition, and I hope the later one retains Richard C. West's "Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings" and Charles A. Huttar's "Hell and the City: Tolkien and the Traditions of Western Literature."
Patricia Reynolds and Glen GoodKnight (eds.), J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference (a huge combined issue of Mythlore and Mallorn; should be available from the Mythopoeic Society).
Other essay collections of note include Tolkien and His Literary Resonances, Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, etc.
ARTICLES
“Tolkien on Tolkien,” available online here at Chrons:
https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/561392/
Michael Resnick’s interview with Tolkien, published in the fanzine Niekas, available online here:
http://efanzines.com/Niekas/Niekas-18.pdf
Rateliff, John. "'A Kind of Elvish Craft': Tolkien as Literary Craftsman," Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 1-21. This was, for me, one of the best essays on Tolkien that I have ever read. That is the essay I mentioned here:
https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/537344/
The annual journal Tolkien Studies, where Rateliff’s article appeared, deserves attention. An online-only journal, The Journal of Tolkien Research, may prove to be excellent. It is associated with Douglas Anderson, one of the very top scholars in the field of Tolkien and high fantasy (also weird fiction).
http://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/
Nelson, Dale. “Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literary Influences on Tolkien,” in Michael Drout (ed.) J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Also “Tolkien’s Further Indebtedness to Haggard.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society #47 (Spring 2009): 38-40, and “Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien’s Fantasy.” Tolkien Studies 1 (West Virginia University Press, 2004). If these matters interest you, see also John Rateliff’s "She and Tolkien," Mythlore, 8 no. 2 (whole number 28; Summer 1981): 6-8. This article is on Haggard’s famous romance and its echoes in Tolkien’s fantasy.
Nelson, Dale. “Rings of Love: J. R. R. Tolkien and the Four Loves.” Touchstone vol. 15 #1: 48-50. This article was also printed, as “The Lord of the Rings and the Four Loves,” in Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society #40 (Nov. 2002): 29-31. Available online:
http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=15-01-048-f
Recommended resource: The Mythopoeic Society sells an index to its journal Mythlore, which has published much discussion of Tolkien and other writers in the high fantasy tradition. The Mythopoeic Society keeps in print the complete run of Mythlore, which started as a delightful fanzine and has become perhaps the foremost scholar journal on high fantasy.
The Tolkien Gateway may be useful as a means to trace essays. I confess that I haven’t used it much so far.
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Main_Page
BLOGS
http://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/
http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/
https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/
http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/ Occasional Tolkienian content
https://wadecenterblog.wordpress.com/ Occasional Tolkienian content; devoted to the Inklings
AUDIO RECORDINGS
Lovers of Tolkien’s fantasy must hear him read from his own works. Caedmon sells a set of CDs with most of this material.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0694525707/?tag=brite-21
Tolkien interviewed by the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p021jx7j
NEWSLETTER
The monthly newsletter Beyond Bree is available by mail or online. It's a very good deal.
http://www.cep.unt.edu/bree.html
I’m bound to miss something with this first posting, especially in the category of individual essays rather than essay collections, but herewith a sincere response to J. D. Worthington’s request:
Call for Reminiscences: The Earliest Academic Conferences on Tolkien
THE CORE COLLECTION
The seven books listed below are mandatory for anyone looking to explore and write about Tolkien and his work in the fantastic.
Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien and his selection of Tolkien’s letters. The current paperback edition of the Letters has a more thorough index than the original hardcover edition.
Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth in its current paperback edition is, I would say, the one most essential critical work, teeming with insight. His book on Tolkien as “author of the century” is not a rehash at a simplified level of the Road book, but a second major scholarly work.
Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond: Reader’s Companion and their two-volume set J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide are fabulous troves of information on Tolkien and his writings.
OTHER OUTSTANDING BOOKS
Verlyn Flieger’s three major studies Splintered Light, A Question of Time, and Interrupted Music; and the collection Green Suns and Faerie. The first two, at least, of these books perhaps belong in the “Core Collection.” I place them here only because they seem slightly less “essential” than the ones I have listed above.
Tom Shippey’s collection of his Tolkienian essays, Roots and Branches
The twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, and the History of the Hobbit, prepared by John Rateliff. Important if one wants to follow Tolkien’s exceedingly well-documented creative path through various drafts, including the revelation of various false trails (e.g. Strider originally being Trotter, a hobbit who wore wooden shoes). There are similar critical editions of Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham; Smith of Wootton Major; and On Fairy-Stories. Also Douglas Anderson's The Annotated Hobbit, second edition.
Verlyn Flieger and Carl Hostetter (eds.). Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth. Essay collection.
John Garth’s book about Tolkien’s service in World War I and the origins of Middle-earth
Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings, about the informal group that meant very much indeed to Tolkien, particularly during the composition of The Lord of the Rings; if you are interested in this topic, after reading Carpenter see Diana Glyer Pavlac’s The Company They Keep, perhaps also the Zaleskis’ book The Fellowship.
NOTEWORTHY BOOKS THAT MIGHT NOT BE NECESSARY
Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth, Revised Edition, will enhance one’s sense of Tolkien’s meticulous care in visualizing Middle-earth. One could also get Barbara Strachey’s Journeys of Frodo for the same reason. I have both, but would not be prepared to say yet whether one alone would be plenty and if so which.
Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle-earth: Tolkien’s World from A to Z is a useful reference book.
Clyde S. Kilby’s Tolkien and the Silmarillion appeared a year before Christopher Tolkien’s recension of his father’s great tales of the First and Second Ages. The Kilby book contains a chapter on the American professor’s sojourn in Oxford with Tolkien during summer 1966; it is one of the best evocations of the elderly Tolkien that we’ll ever have and helps one to understand why The Silmarillion had to be a posthumous construction. Kilby founded the Inklings collection at the Marion E. Wade Center in Wheaton College, which is one of the top locations for Tolkien-related research, second only to Oxford and Marquette University in Milwaukee. The book was published in Wheaton, Ill., by Harold Shaw, 1976.
A second book with a superb reminiscence of Tolkien the man is the anthology edited by Joseph Pearce, Tolkien: A Celebration, with George Sayer’s (not Sayers’) piece “Recollections of J. R. R. Tolkien.”
Lobdell, Jared. England and Always OR Tolkien’s World of the Ring (I think that’s the title of the later edition). A good chapter on LOTR as an adventure story in the Edwardian mode, etc. (See also Nelson’s article on 19th- and 20th-century literary influences on Tolkien, below.)
BOOKS OF ESSAYS
There are numerous collections of scholarly essays on Tolkien and his fantasy. Among the best, I believe, are:
Isaacs and Zimbardo (ed.). Tolkien and the Critics.
Lobdell, Jared (ed.). Tolkien Compass. The original edition only was formerly essential because it printed Tolkien’s lengthy “Notes on the Nomenclature” -- but that valuable work is now in one of the Scull-Hammond volumes above. I have the original edition, and I hope the later one retains Richard C. West's "Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings" and Charles A. Huttar's "Hell and the City: Tolkien and the Traditions of Western Literature."
Patricia Reynolds and Glen GoodKnight (eds.), J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference (a huge combined issue of Mythlore and Mallorn; should be available from the Mythopoeic Society).
Other essay collections of note include Tolkien and His Literary Resonances, Tolkien’s Modern Middle Ages, etc.
ARTICLES
“Tolkien on Tolkien,” available online here at Chrons:
https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/561392/
Michael Resnick’s interview with Tolkien, published in the fanzine Niekas, available online here:
http://efanzines.com/Niekas/Niekas-18.pdf
Rateliff, John. "'A Kind of Elvish Craft': Tolkien as Literary Craftsman," Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 1-21. This was, for me, one of the best essays on Tolkien that I have ever read. That is the essay I mentioned here:
https://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/537344/
The annual journal Tolkien Studies, where Rateliff’s article appeared, deserves attention. An online-only journal, The Journal of Tolkien Research, may prove to be excellent. It is associated with Douglas Anderson, one of the very top scholars in the field of Tolkien and high fantasy (also weird fiction).
http://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/
Nelson, Dale. “Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literary Influences on Tolkien,” in Michael Drout (ed.) J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Also “Tolkien’s Further Indebtedness to Haggard.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society #47 (Spring 2009): 38-40, and “Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien’s Fantasy.” Tolkien Studies 1 (West Virginia University Press, 2004). If these matters interest you, see also John Rateliff’s "She and Tolkien," Mythlore, 8 no. 2 (whole number 28; Summer 1981): 6-8. This article is on Haggard’s famous romance and its echoes in Tolkien’s fantasy.
Nelson, Dale. “Rings of Love: J. R. R. Tolkien and the Four Loves.” Touchstone vol. 15 #1: 48-50. This article was also printed, as “The Lord of the Rings and the Four Loves,” in Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society #40 (Nov. 2002): 29-31. Available online:
http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=15-01-048-f
Recommended resource: The Mythopoeic Society sells an index to its journal Mythlore, which has published much discussion of Tolkien and other writers in the high fantasy tradition. The Mythopoeic Society keeps in print the complete run of Mythlore, which started as a delightful fanzine and has become perhaps the foremost scholar journal on high fantasy.
The Tolkien Gateway may be useful as a means to trace essays. I confess that I haven’t used it much so far.
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Main_Page
BLOGS
http://www.tolkiensociety.org/blog/
http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/
http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/
https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/
http://wormtalk.blogspot.com/ Occasional Tolkienian content
https://wadecenterblog.wordpress.com/ Occasional Tolkienian content; devoted to the Inklings
AUDIO RECORDINGS
Lovers of Tolkien’s fantasy must hear him read from his own works. Caedmon sells a set of CDs with most of this material.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0694525707/?tag=brite-21
Tolkien interviewed by the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p021jx7j
NEWSLETTER
The monthly newsletter Beyond Bree is available by mail or online. It's a very good deal.
http://www.cep.unt.edu/bree.html
Last edited: