Essential and noteworthy Tolkien-related books, essays, recordings, etc

[Extollager]

What about forthcoming books? Well, who knows? I do think it's possible that there'll be no more new books worthy of a place with that Core Collection, from the point of view of most readers. However, I have high hopes for one more book, The Nature of Middle-earth:

“THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH” by JRRT due May 2021

I’ve just seen an announcement that a 400-page book of Tolkien’s late musings on his secondary world, edited by Carl Hostetter, is due next year. It will appeal particularly to those who liked UNFINISHED TALES and some of the material in the late volumes of The History of Middle-earth...

www.sffchronicles.com

I wonder if that won't be the last book on, or by, Tolkien that I will buy.

One I would snap up immediately would be a catalogue of the books Tolkien owned. Years ago, in Beyond Bree, I reported, on the authority of Christopher Tolkien, that JRRT did catalog his library in the 1930s, for insurance purposes. So far as I know, that catalogue is extant and owned by the family. A good edition of that would be of great interest, I should think; and yet it may well be that some of the books of most importance to Tolkien were university library ones he used but didn't own.

My thanks to Paranoid Marvin, by the way; a posting elsewhere by him prompted me to revisit and update this thread, which I hope will be useful.

 

[Extollager]

A book that didn't get the attention it deserved was Raymond Edwards's' Tolkien (Hale, 2014). This biography seemed to me particularly good on Tolkien's academic milieu. Of course, it had the advantage of nearly 30 years of additional Tolkien scholarship since publication of Carpenter's authorized biography of JRRT. See the exacting David Bratman's review here

Project MUSE - <i>Tolkien</i> by Raymond Edwards (review)

muse.jhu.edu

and then get your copy. ; )

 

[Extollager]

A collection of essay that I have yet to spend much time with, but which I suspect is one of the best in years, is edited by Jason Fisher -- Tolkien and the Study of His Sources: Critical Essays (McFarland, 2011).

I would like to recommend Dickerson and Evans's not-well-titled Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J. R. R. Tolkien (U. Press of Kentucky, 2006), to anyone interested in the resonance of Tolkien's imaginative fiction with care of the earth. I reviewed this in 2010 and it's a keeper.

 

[Extollager]

Useful for some occasions is William Blackwelder's A Tolkien Thesaurus -- though I would have called it a Concordance. Blackwelder's book is not "a book that lists words in groups of synonyms and related concepts." Rather, it is a compilation of words used in The Lord of the Rings other than "most articles, conjunctions, prepositions, common adverbs, and auxiliary verb forms, along with the most common words of size, number, color, and direction." Blackwelder estimates that he lists about 15,000 words in 40,000 entries, with page references to the Houghton Mifflin second edition (hardcover) and the Ballantine Books revised edition (paperback). The concordance was published (c) 1990.

This is a great tool for looking up passages, confirming quotations, etc.

Unfortunately, it's out of print and copies seem to be very scarce, going for around $300. I got a copy on interlibrary loan and photocopied it. If the book were to be reprinted, I would probably consider that the honorable thing to do would be to buy one and/or to discard my photocopies. At the moment the book is out of print and Mr. Blackwelder's work is unavailable except from 6 academic libraries -- I'm not sure if they all accept interlibrary loan requests for this book. I imagine Blackwelder would like his work to be used.

 

[svalbard]

I just came across this article by Dr Caitlin Green. It is speculative but interesting all the same.

A 'Sorcerer's Stronghold' in Anglo-Saxon Nottinghamshire: Teversal, Sherwood... & Tolkien's Dol Guldur?

A previous post on this site looked at Teversham in Cambridgeshire ( Teuresham in 1086), which is best interpreted as an early Anglo-Saxo...

www.caitlingreen.org