The Third Age: the Lord of the Rings [Book List, pg 2]

The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes.

    The Rest –

    -Children’s Stories:
    These could arguably have been placed with the “Short Works”. My reasons for making a separate section: 1) they are children’s stories in a way that the other short works are not and 2) for convenience — each has appeared in one form, whereas the other short works exist in a multitude of combinations.

Bilbo’s Last Song.
Illustrated by Pauline Baynes. HM, 1990 (ISBN 0-395-53810-6). Dragonfly Books, 1992 (ISBN 0-679-82710-2) (paper). (Published originally as a poster in 1974 by Allen & Unwin and by HM).

The Father Christmas Letters.
Edited by Baillie Tolkien. HM, 1976 (ISBN 0-395-24981-3) [op]; HM, 1977, 1991 (ISBN 0-395-59698-X) (paper). Allen & Unwin, 1976 (ISBN 0-04-823130-4) (British edition).

Mr. Bliss.
HM, 1983 (ISBN 0-395-32936-1) [op]. Allen & Unwin, 1983 (ISBN 0-04-823215-7). (Facsimile edition reproduced from Tolkien’s illustrated manuscript.)

Oliphaunt (Beastly Verse Board Book).
Illustrated by Hank Hinton. Calico Books (Contemporary Books, Inc.), 1989 (ISBN 0-8092-4353-9). (An illustrated version of the well-known poem.)

    -Short Works:
    Various shorter pieces, all of them fiction except for ‘On Fairy Stories’, a lecture, and ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’, which includes scholarly commentary. All appeared during Tolkien’s lifetime and thus presumably were completed to his satisfaction. A variety of combinations exists; the list below is not complete.

Farmer Giles of Ham.
HM, 1950, 1978 (illustrated by Pauline Baynes) (ISBN 0-395-07121-6) [op] ; HM, 1991 (illustrated by Roger Garland) (ISBN 0-395-57645-8).

The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.
in Essays and Studies by members of the English Association, New Series Volume VI, 1953, pp 1-18. (London, John Murray).

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses From the Red Book.
HM, 1963 (illustrated by Pauline Baynes); HM, 1991 (illustrated by Roger Garland) (ISBN 0-395-57647-4).

Tree and Leaf.
HM, 1965, 1989 (ISBN 0-395-50232-2). (The 1989 edition includes the poem ‘Mythopoeia’.)

The Tolkien Reader.
Ballantine, 1966 (ISBN 0-345-29881-0) (paper). [Contains HBBS, TL, FGH, and ATB.]

Smith of Wooton Major.
HM, 1967 (illustrated by Pauline Baynes) [op] ; HM, 1991 (illustrated by Roger Garland) (ISBN 0-395-57646-6).

Smith of Wooton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham.
Illustrated by Pauline Baynes. Ballantine, 1969 (ISBN 0-345-33606-2) (paper).

Poems and Stories.
Illustrated by Pauline Baynes. Allen & Unwin, 1980 (ISBN 0-04-823174-6) (Deluxe Edition). [Contains ATB, HBBS, TL, FGH, and SWM.]

    -Scholarly Works:
    Such scholarly work of Tolkien’s as has appeared in book form. Tolkien in his own lifetime produced only the Middle English Vocabulary and the editions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Ancrene Wisse. The others were edited by Christopher Tolkien or other former students. The book of Essays in Memoriam contains only one piece by Tolkien but this seems a suitable place to list it. Songs for Philologists strictly speaking is not a work of scholarship, but it is certainly of that flavor. This is the category it comes closest to fitting; since only about 15 copies are in existence it hardly matters where it is listed. It contains poems by Tolkien and colleagues in Old, Middle, and Modern English, Icelandic, and Latin, plus the only existing poem in Gothic (by Tolkien). Some have been reprinted, most notably the one that became Sam Gamgee’s Troll Song. Three of Tolkien’s Old English poems and the one in Gothic are printed with translations in an appendix to The Road to Middle-earth by T.A. Shippey (see Section I).

Songs for Philologists.
J.R.R. Tolkien, E.V. Gordon, and others. Privately printed in the Department of English at University College, 1936.

A Middle English Vocabulary.
Clarendon Press, 1922. (Designed for use with Kenneth Sisam’s Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, Clarendon Press, 1921; subsequently published as a glossary to Sisam.)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight;
Edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon. Clarendon Press, 1925. (2nd edition revised by Norman Davis, 1967). -Buy at Amazon.com

Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle.
Edited by J.R.R. Tolkien. Oxford University Press, 1962. Early English Text Society, Original Series No. 249.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo.
Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien; edited by Christopher Tolkien. HM, 1975 (ISBN 0-395-21970-1) [op]; Ballantine, 1980 (ISBN 0-345-27760-0) (paper). Allen & Unwin, 1975 (ISBN 0-04-821035-8).

The Old English Exodus.
Text, translation, and commentary by J.R.R. Tolkien; edited by Joan Turville-Petre. Oxford University Press, 1981 (ISBN 0-19-811177-0).

Finn and Hengest: the Fragment and the Episode.
Edited by Alan Bliss. HM, 1983 (ISBN 0-395-33193-5).

The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays.
Edited by Christopher Tolkien. HM, 1984 (ISBN 0-395-35635-0).

J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam.
Edited by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell. Cornell University Press, 1979 (ISBN 0-8014-1038-X). [op]

    -Biographical Works:
    Books about Tolkien’s life rather than his literary or scholarly work exclusively.

Tolkien: A Biography;
by Humphrey Carpenter. HM, 1977 (ISBN 0-395-25360-8) [op]; HM, 1988 (ISBN 0-395-48676-9) (paper); Ballantine, 1985 (ISBN 0-345-32729-2) (paper).

The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends;
by Humphrey Carpenter. HM, 1979 (ISBN 0-395-27628-4). [op]

J.R.R. Tolkien, Architect of Middle-earth;
by Daniel Grotta. Running Press, 1976 (ISBN 0-89471-034-6); Running Press, 1978 (ISBN 0-89471-035-4) (paper).

A Tolkien Family Album;
by John and Priscilla Tolkien. HM, 1992 (ISBN 0-395-59938-5).

    -Secondary Works I — Middle-earth Lore:
    These books are compilations of various kinds of information about Middle-earth. How helpful any given one may be depends on the needs of the individual reader. In general they are labors of love by people who genuinely care about Middle-earth and thus are generally well done. Some are enjoyable even when unneeded and more than one is impressive merely from the truly phenomenal amount of detailed study it represents. Two works on the following (incomplete) list (Strachey, Foster) have been referred to positively by Christopher Tolkien in his various commentaries and a third (Allan) by several people knowedgable in Middle-earth languages. I can personally attest to the quality of the others.

The Atlas of Middle-earth;
by Karen Wynn Fonstad. HM, 1981 (ISBN 0-395-28665-4) [op]; HM, 1991 (revised edition) (ISBN 0-395-53516-6) (paper). -Buy at Amazon.com

A Tolkien Bestiary;
by David Day. Crescent Books, 1979 (ISBN 0-517-47325-9). [op]

The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-earth;
by Ruth S. Noel. HM, 1974, 1980 (ISBN 0-395-29129-1) [op]; HM, 1980 (ISBN 0-395-29130-5) (paper).

An Introduction to Elvish: and to other tongues and proper names and writing systems of the Third Age of the Western Lands of Middle-earth as set forth in the published writings of Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
Edited and compiled by Jim Allan from his own researches and from those of Nina Carson [and others]; as authorized by the Mythopoeic Linguistic Fellowship, a discussion group of the Mythopoeic Society. Bran’s Head Books Ltd., 1978 (ISBN 0-905220-10-2). [US — op ; England — in print]

Journeys of Frodo: An Atlas of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings;
by Barbara Strachey. Ballantine, 1981.

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth: From the Hobbit to Silmarillion;
by Robert Foster. HM, 1971, 1978 (ISBN 0-345-27520-9) [op]; Ballantine, 1974, 1979 (ISBN 0-345-32436-6) (paper). -Buy at Amazon.com

    -Secondary Works II — Critical Works: A small sampling of the voluminous body of critical works which have attempted to address the “Lord of the Rings phenomenom”. Except for the last two, the ones listed are those studies which I have read and which I have reason to think are above average (which is to say, they don’t miss the mark entirely). The last two: the Knight book (which may indeed be interesting though only one quarter about Tolkien, the other three-quarters being about Lewis, Williams, and Barfield) is included because it’s listing was so garbled in Books in Print (Tolkien is NOT the author); the Johnson book (a bibliography) is included to help those who have a taste for such things to pursue the literature (it takes us up through c. 1985).

    A word on The Road to Middle-earth. I recommend it unreservedly — there’s no question that it’s the best study of Tolkien available, being primarily philological and medievalist rather than literary in perspective. Shippey, a friend of both Tolkiens, father and son, is himself a philologist and medievalist who holds the chair at Leeds University that Tolkien once held himself.

The Road to Middle-earth;
by T.A. Shippey. HM, 1983 (ISBN 0-395-33973-1). [op]

Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World;
by Verlyn Flieger. Eerdmans, 1983 (ISBN 0-8028-1955-9) (paper) [op]. (a facsimile version of the original hardcover is available for an outrageous sum.)

Tolkien and the Silmarillion;
by Clyde S. Kilby. Harold Shaw, 1976 (ISBN 0-87788-816-7). [op]

Master of Middle-earth: The Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien;
by Paul Kocher. HM, 1972 (ISBN 0-395-14097-8) [op]; HM, 1972 (ISBN 0-395-17701-4) (paper).

J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality, and Religion;
by Richard L. Purtill. Harper & Row, 1984 (ISBN 0-06-066712-5). [op]

The Magical World of the Inklings;
by Gareth Knight. Element Books, UK (Tempest Books, US), 1990 (ISBN 1-85230-169-4) (paper).

J.R.R. Tolkien: Six Decades of Criticism;
by Judith A Johnson. (Bibliographies & Indexes in World Literature Series No. 6). Greenwood Press, 1986 (ISBN 0-313-25005-7).

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