this should be the best answer in the threat. i love that his letters let us find the answers right from his own mouth, so to speak. i will further add Jonathan McIntosh's phenomenal The Flame Imperishable as a recommended work. it explores the way tolkien's familiarity with st thomas and other catholic philosophers influenced the creation of middle-earth and is an absolutely fantastic look at how the depth of his catholic education played a roll in his writing.
Tolkien's life boring? Absolutely not.
Read Scull and Hammond's Chronology from their Companion and Guide. His life as an academic was filled with meetings, dinners and events with other really cool academics and writers. He mixed with some of the best writers of his time and was on first name terms with many others. They may not have been celebrity A listers but Tolkien and his circles were enjoying a very social and academically engaging life.
His home life was simple and typical of English academia at the time but it was anything but boring.
Yup, from this book here. Now I'm sure it's probably just based off the stuff the team at WETA did, so accuracy in terms of what Tolkien envisioned in his goblins is debatable.
https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Weapons-Warfare/dp/0618391002
But no, I at least was referring to something, rather than conjuring it from thin air ;)
My personal favorite is Ted Nasmith's Illustrated Edition.
But The Silmarillion never underwent any substantial textual revisions, so whatever you decide to pick up will be fine.
Tolkien wrote an epic poem about Arthur (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fall-Arthur-J-R-Tolkien/dp/0007557302/). Can it be that he disliked what some other authors did with the legend?
>Was he just a one-trick pony?
If knowledge of multiple European languages (not only in their present-day form, but in their historical forms too) is just one trick, it's a pretty big one.
It's an interesting question though. He did own a Assyrian-Babylonian grammar and workbook. It's in this (very partial) inventory of his library.
I'm sure he must have had some knowledge of Sanskrit, given its importance for Indo-European philology though - there is, in fact, a book on Tolkien and Sanskrit which argues that his knowledge of that language influenced nomenclature in the Silmarillion.
However, his academic work was primarily on the Germanic languages, his knowledge of other Indo-European languages varied, and he had some knowledge of Uralic languages, like Finnish.
You can do it, man. (he typed on his smartphone)
Seriously. I started in around 2018 using time blocking to reformat my day, only allowing smartphone use for certain blocks and cutting out social media almost entirely (I cut out all the ones I view as particularly problematic...being all of them but Reddit.) and I can't say enough about how much better I feel. Physically. Mentally. Just in every aspect of everything.
There's an app (at least on Android, I don't know about iOS) called Forest that helps encourage you to manage your smartphone usage by having you block off time to not use it and rewarding you with digital trees. I used that a lot to help.
My favourite is this speculation of Bombadil from rec.arts.books.tolkien back in 1994:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.books.tolkien/orome$20bombadil/rec.arts.books.tolkien/Ujq2zh6xKxE/LcHg4UtxAYEJ
and
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.arts.books.tolkien/faq$20bombadil/rec.arts.books.tolkien/RH-Ctm-65GE/RvInPg1TkFIJ
Though it's worth pointing out that we'll never get a definitive answer, since Tolkien said (in Letter #144) said that Bombadil's intentionally an unsolved/unsolvable mystery: >>> "even in a mythical Age there must be some enigmas, as there always are. Tom Bombadil is one (intentionally)."
> Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.
The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again By John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, page 19
I like this version. Not abridged but the illustrations are great: ilustrated Hobbit
Tolkien writes in a particular style that kind of info dumps, and when people criticize his writing, they usually don't realize that it's like that because a lot of the old English texts thay inspired him were like that.
For writing advice: read, read, read. Every book you read will help you internalize what effective writing feels like. Take every writing class you can, fiction, non-fiction, professional, essays, etc. Write a bit every day. Share writing with other writers. Read books ABOUT writing. I suggest Ray Bradbury's "Zen in the Art of Writing" to start. Maybe King's "On Writing." If you're super serious and dont mind something intense, John Gardner's "The Art of Fiction." Probably most important: learn to LOVE CRITICISM. If someone thinks your story is terrible and tells you, very specifically, why it doesn't work, thank them with a huge smile and get to work fixing that problem if it rings true. Actively seek out what is wrong with your own work
Pm me if you've got questions. Hope this helps :)
you should check out The Atlas of Middle Earth. It's a great book, and makes things very clear. Not by Tolkien himself, but Fonstad has studied everything he's ever written and used them brilliantly.
Thank you for the link. It goes to further illustrate how absurd this claim is:
>[Robert P. Wade, former General Counsel, National Endowment for the Arts] researched the law and concluded that [use of Tolkien's langauges] would not violate any Tolkien copyrights, for a few different reasons. I won't have time to go into all of them, but here's one: The copyright law specifically says it does not protect any procedure, process, or system. A language is a system. In fact, there have been cases saying that computer languages are not copyrightable.
The Tolkien Estate should not have a right to claim ownership of these languages or writing systems.
Here is the link to this legal opinion that produced this result.
The BBC did a radio dramatisation of LoTR back in 1981. I loved it. It is an adaptation, so there are a few discrepancies and once again Bombadil gets omitted, but it is a full cast drama and is, for example, far closer to the book than the films were.
It's available from Amazon, and I notice that all the episodes are also on Soundcloud, but since that doesn't seem to be an official BBC upload, I won't link to it.
Found an Amazon listing for it so you can save it in a wishlist.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0008226741/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i13
The Magic Schoolbus authors (Cole and Degen) are really highly educated and well read people, they've been publishers, teachers, librarians, etc. It would be really odd if Tolkien had never been encountered by them.
Young Wizards Author Diane Duane has written a critical essay on Tolkien, so I think it's safe to assume she read his books.
Don't underestimate authors.
That set was published by Houghton Mifflin in the late 80's and through the 90's. They exist as hardbacks, paperbacks in a set and paperbacks with jackets sold individually. Not sure why they don't have the maps, I don't think they have the Gates of Moria drawing either. Could be a simple matter of printing costs.
You can find them here on AbeBooks in the paperback set. The hardbacks can be found here.
The ISBNs are as follows: Paperback set: 0395489075 Hardback set: 0395489326
Same :(.
I've been trying to remedy that by listening to audiobooks as often as I can (on my commute, when doing housework, etc.). Audible is pretty awesome with their giant library, but if you end up with your own audiobook files you want to listen to (usually mp3 or m4a/m4b files), I highly recommend Smart Audiobook Player. It's great at remembering where you are in a book (even if you're bouncing between several in your "library"), and has quick jump forward/backward 20sec/1min buttons (for when you realized you spaced out), which are both features I found lacking in earlier apps, and the lack of which ultimately discouraged me from listening to long audiobooks before I started using the app.
Others have already chimed in about the quality of the book and the scholars behind it. But let me add the note that the book also contains quotes from Tolkien's own notes and drafts that I haven't seen anywhere else. Here are a couple of delighted Usenet posts that I made years ago about some of the tidbits in there:
Overview, and lots of amazing detail about Weathertop: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.arts.books.tolkien/BtUEz0lWa9c/yo96TUtr__IJ
Ugluk met Gollum while the Fellowship was in Lorien!: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.arts.books.tolkien/k3MupFPpCjo/8gXqDyTbK_EJ
I have the eBook, but I can't extract the audio so I re-record it. I'm not good with this kind of stuff so I'm sorry if the quality is not too good. https://www.dropbox.com/s/vwj682wz8uhfddy/tolkien.mp3
I have not read anything beyond the trilogy and the hobbit, so I was excited to hear that Jackson plans on expanding on The Necromancer in the movies. Here's a nice little article about it, with a blurb about Sauron/The Necromancer also: link
In terms of the middle ground of great quality and decent cost I think the overall best package at the moment is the Alan Lee illustrated boxset from last year:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Boxed-Illustrated/dp/0008376107
If you are patient and not in a rush there’s a single hardcover volume being released in October of this year that’s supposed to include Tolkien’s original illustrations. I think the cover art is quite nice as well. Price isn’t bad either for hardcover.
https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Illustrated-J-R-R-Tolkien/dp/0358653037
This is the setting for a Rome: Total War mod.
It's a very old game now. I remember I enjoyed this mod until the War of the Ring mod for Medieval 2: Total War came out. I don't think I ever understood the story though.
This image is some of JRRTs personal book cover artwork.
The design of the eye is striking, and combined with the idea of it looking out from Barad-Dur, either physically as an ordinary eye (literally out a window or embrasure) just with extraordinary malice felt behind it (not unlike say a Fiery Feanor), or metaphysically as through a Palantir, or immense presence felt (through power of the One Ring?) like by Frodo at the Mirror of Galadriel or upon Amon Hen. It's almost logical that it would have become exaggerated in artists depictions since. Sauron was also of larger stature than normal men though not 'giant', so even an ordinary or his would be to scale. In a spiritual realm, who is to say how proportions operate? Just like how Elves like Glorfindel appear to shine in both, maybe Sauron is larger and fierier. The idea that 'his arm had grown long' enough to hurl snow and ice down upon them at Caradhras, would metaphorically at least imply his eye also grew larger apace (and vision sharper?) too. Physically we do know he had a network of spies and agents at least as large as Sarumans. Consideration just a few such things, combined with a little artistic licence seems to explain 'Giant lighthouse eyeball'. In another way, you can just consider it metonymy for his obsession with finding the One Ring.
>Tolkien I don't think is known for this, and I'm not sure if or what horror influences he had on his writing, but the man has some serious horror chops for an English professor and good instincts for writing what, in any other context, would be called Lovecraftian horror; he writes some downright terrifying and unnerving things that play upon fear of the unknown. Things less have minds of their own as they did in the old animistic framework, but they can be cursed by events that call to ancient, eldritch evils to abide there. And one of the major reasons why it works is because he gives just a taste of unknowable, nameless fear, and then implies more.
Being a professor at an English university is no barrier to writing very powerful horror fiction. Many of M. R. James’ short stories are in the public domain and contain unexpectedly potent kicks.
According to Genesis God created everything by speech acts (the ultimate performative utterances we might say).
> And God said, “Let there be light”.
> And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.”
etc.
Tolkien might have been inspired by that.
edit: There is also an ancient concept of Musica universalis, which was incorporated into Christianity.
> And Melkor came at the same time the Valar did, so Tom was before all.
Lol, it's an internet thing. Reddit comments, and most internet text boxes with formatting support, use a formatting language called Markdown. Here's a cheat sheet
It depends on what you mean by "best". Physically nicest, best illustrated, most error-free, or most useful.
These are particularly nice choices and their paperback versions are also nice. (And you might find them cheaper somewhere else, this is just for identification.) The second one is the newest and most accurate one issued so far. While the first one is slightly less accurate, if I were buying one it would probably be that one, since the set doesn’t include Hobbit, but does include Hammond & Scull’s excellent companion volume. It also includes two introductory notes about the text that were introduced in the 50th Anniversary Edition, but omitted in the second one, below, which are interesting (but not absolutely necessary). The second one, which does include Hobbit but not the Hammond & Scull volume, is perhaps a “nicer” presentation and has been referred to as “semi deluxe”. I can’t speak to the quality of the bindings of these two; I just don’t have any information about it. And I'm mostly indifferent to illustrations beyond what Tolkien originally included in the published LotR.
60th Anniversary Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Boxed-Set-Tolkien/dp/0007581149/
2020 Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Boxed-Set/dp/0008376107/
I've not heard what text the upcoming October single volume will use or what will be included. One would hope that it will at least be the same as the more accurate one, above, if not improved from that one to correct the errors that have been detected since its publication. But there's an unfortunate tendency to introduce new errors every time the old ones are corrected.
But as I've said here before, unless you're intending to become a Tolkien scholar, the errors in any edition published after the 50th Anniversary Edition (which includes both of those linked above) are so relatively minor that they probably will make no difference for you.
Speaking of maps, you'll probably be a very happy camper if you reward your new achievement (and prep for the Silmarillion) by spending around $20 for this atlas. Helps with not just locations, but populations, battles, journeys, and even timelines. Indispensable and so readable you'll sit with it just turning the pages, not only for reference.
And congratulations on completing your first read of Hobbit and LOTR! Be sure to check in here as you go while reading the Silmarillion. First-time readers have a special honored place here :-)
Searching the etymology of 'Dragon' I got this. It says that another form of dragon is
worm (n.) Old English wurm, variant of wyrm "serpent, dragon," also in later Old English "earthworm," from Proto-Germanic *wurmiz (cf. Old Saxon, Old High German, German wurm, Old Frisian and Dutch worm, Old Norse ormr, Gothic waurms "serpent, worm"), from PIE *wrmi-/*wrmo- "worm" (cf. Greek rhomos, Latin vermis "worm," Old Russian vermie "insects," Lithuanian varmas "insect, gnat"), possibly from root *wer- "turn" (see versus).
The ancient category of these was much more extensive than the modern, scientific, one and included serpents, scorpions, maggots, and the supposed causes of certain diseases. For substitution of -o- for -u-, see come. As an insult meaning "abject, miserable person" it dates from Old English.
So I'd assume in his love of Old English he used Worm in the sense that it used to mean writhing, gross things like worms, maggots, snakes, and actual dragons. So I'd assume Scatha, at least in Tolkien's mind, was pretty long and skinny rather than a bulky, thick, dragon. Hypothetically anyways haha. I'd assume it still has legs, though according to the wiki's (which may or may not be accurate) it doesn't seem to have wings.
I didn't want it to seem like I was sending people over to start trouble. I just found the answer indefensible and wanted more info.
Yeah, that's why I find myself drawn to Lord of the Rings Online, you actually do sort of get to live in Middle Earth! There is just so much attention to detail by Tolkien (he did spend his entire adult life on it, after all), that you can't help but get lost in the world. I also somewhat feel that way about Star Wars.
Or at any of the 2252 libraries listed here (you may wish to make sure that the location information shows something near you to make sure the closest libraries are listed at the top).
Here is the link to the Amazon page https://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Cookbook-Unofficial-Hobbit-Cookery/dp/1976519853/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512179546&sr=8-1&keywords=the+hobbit+cookbook I purchased the hardback version a few years ago and have made many of the recipes. The writer has done their homework, both with Tolkien's writing and world, and with older-style English country cookery. I highly recommend!
https://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Maker-Middle-earth-Catherine-McIlwaine/dp/1851244859
You can still get it on Amazon. It's a little pricey but definitely worth it since you can't take pictures of the exhibit. It's not just images, it's got a lot of good text.
With 1, there's not any explicit placement, and it probably matters all the less because you are going with a design that is quite different than what Tolkien imagined and drew himself. You can see his arrangement on the cover that he drew, though in this the crown and the tree are separate elements, not combined. Note how some of the stars are actually within the compass of the tree there. 'About' has uses that may be a bit more vague than the way you are interpreting it, and that may solve some of your doubt. (The marks underneath the top star are not the crown, by the way, but 'III', for this being the third part of LotR.)
With 2, you're misinterpreting what you have there, and possibly what the person on twitter told you. What you have there is still English. You have exchanged the symbols for the letters for different symbols from a writing system, tengwar, that is associated with Tolkien's languages, but you are still using English.
Using a different writing system doesn't change the language of something. Symbols are just the way we represent them. If I replace every single letter of every word with this sentence with a unique symbol, using the same symbol each time for each letter, it is still a sentence in English, and if you knew which symbol mapped to which English letter you could read it.
You never actually translated it into Sindarin, is the issue. You just changed the letters of 'My friend, you bow to no one' into a system of symbols that Sindarin uses.
One geographical detail that confused me somewhat as a young one: Aman is the continent in the West, on which the Valar founded Valinor. For ages I simply thought that "Aman" was a fancy name for Valinor, but the Silmarillion cleared that right up! At one point in the Hobbit, Tolkien also refers to the land as "Faery in the West". The "West-ness" could have been inspired by various other mythological islands which were imagined by Europeans and others to be floating in the sea to the west, possibly to the west of the British Isles.
Along what has already been mentioned here, Icelandic mythology has been an inspiration to him. Big part of the names of the characters come from Icelandic myths. Here is a link to a short paper that shows the linkage between Tolkien's world and Norse mythology: Edit: Link added.
The HoMe books are really just the collected earlier, abandoned and alternative drafts of the main 'canon' material that makes up the contents of the Silmarillion and LOTR. There are some very interesting bits and pieces that are only found in them, but yeah I'd read the main books again first. Also, if you want a quick path to a deeper understanding of the whole mythos, add to your list one more book, the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, which does in fact touch on this and a whole lot of other fascinating core details.
https://www.amazon.com/Letters-J-R-R-Tolkien-J-R/dp/0618056998 An Amazon link to The Letters of Tolkien Unfortunately I can't help you I asked because I plan to do the same after I finish with the Witcher and I wasn't sure about the order
The edition you're looking for is out of print. You can still get it second hand on amazon though, but it's 79dollar. The illustration is by Ted Nasmith. There is also a "blue version" which is still available new.
Here is an amazon link to your red edition:
https://www.amazon.com/SILMARILLION-Tolkien-J-R-45/dp/B009M92IVO
Blue edition:
Goodluck!
The History of Middle-Earth series contains most of his drafts and shows an amazing amount of detail about his story-building process. In general he seems to not plan much, at least not on paper, and many details change once pen hits paper.
Early on the Lord of the Rings was just going to be a merry sequel to The Hobbit. His publishers pushed him to make it when really he wanted to publish his older writings about the Silmarils. Eventually those grand ideas crept into his writing and morphed his merry tale into something bigger and darker.
The earliest drafts of the story have a hobbit named Bongo Baggins going off to have an adventure, in what was a very light-hearted style. This later became Frodo, and surprisingly some early details remained the same. From what I remember the Long Awaited Party chapter was mostly unchanged from its first draft.
The story made a big turn when Tolkien came to a scene where the hobbits were on the road and heard a horse approaching. Everything written so far implied this would be Gandalf, but on what seems like a whim Tolkien made it a mysterious black rider. The story took on a darker turn from there.
I highly recommend reading the History of Middle Earth series if you want to know more. It's amazing to see what details from early drafts survived, though often in convoluted forms. Christopher's commentary on the text is also very enlightening.
I also recommend Stephen King's 'On Writing', a book about the writing process in general. King says there are two main approached to writing - one being planning ahead thoroughly, the other involving a rough idea of generally unearthing the story as you write. Tolkien certainly took the latter approach with the Lord of the Rings.
It is? Ever see The Pianist? Papillon? Er, The Hunger Games?
I don't think showing hunger is any harder than showing any other problems human beings have, from sleepiness to needing to pee really bad.
Tolkien was kind of a literary omnivore. Here's an influence he acknowledged:
> I suppose as a boy [H. Rider Haggard's novel] "She" interested me as much as anything—like the Greek shard of Amyntas [Amenartas], which was the kind of machine by which everything got moving.
-Henry Resnick, "An Interview with Tolkien", Niekas, 1967.
Many resemblances between Ayesha, the title character of She and Galadriel (beautiful immortal ruler of isolated ancient kingdom requiring any she admits to be blindfolded; has a seeing mirror of water that she says is not magic, etc.).
Some more parallels from Haggard's The Treasure of the Lake: https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA370&lpg=PA370&dq=tolkien+haggard&source=bl&ots=hiDDbFe9Xe&sig=ZpGwxryzG2oH5GkPvDlIH2-hO-A&hl=en&sa=X&ei=L0TqVO73EtCeyASM24GgCg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&am...
I would try Abe Books you might have to search for the volumes you're missing individually though, depending on which you have.
One of many inspirations. Another was Väinämöinen from the Finnish Kalevala. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4in%C3%A4m%C3%B6inen
Some details on that and many other Tolkien influences from the Kalevala: https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA206&lpg=PA206&dq=wizard+kalevala&source=bl&ots=hiDC5Je90f&sig=LBlDTeMPQ4iTlFZBSka7R0MJRZY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=onbSVIXBG9PfsATkvYHQAw&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&am...
For someone who's reading the book for the first time since he was a kid (like me), the pronunciation guide in The Children of Húrin is very helpful.
Here's one. My google-fu fails me.
Archive of Our Own is probably the biggest fanfic site out there. It has Tolkien fanfic, as well as every other fandom you can imagine (and probably quite a few you can't!).
There are thousands of stories here but, as several others have pointed out, it's an awfully big haystack and finding the worthwhile needles can be a challenge.
I own this set and can confirm that they're very pretty. The books are a good size, are beautiful with or without the dust jackets, and have illustrations throughout and a fold-out map in the back of each volume. The illustration on the covers and the box are designed by Alan Lee, so if you're a fan of his style then this is a strong contender.
Volumes VI-IX of HoMe cover the writing of LotR and are kind of a stand-alone part of HoMe (as if anything in Tolkien's legendarium is really stand-alone 😁), so if you want that experience you can buy those volumes without too much concern you're coming into the middle of the story.
You'd also benefit from reading Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien that gives much of the "real world" background of the writing of LotR.
Just to note that if you have an inkling <ahem> that you might become interested in all of HoMe, you don't have to buy many individual volumes before you've spent more than you would to buy the compiled version. Let me recommend that you check the volumes that you're interested in out of your local public library and get a taste for them before starting to spend money.
If you'd like to know what that book is about before listening to a 51 minute podcast, there's a pretty good summary of it at its Amazon page.
The topic is fairly interesting, though one must wonder how it requires, per Amazon, a 392-page book.
Links to go along with u/rabbithasacat's recommendation:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7343.Tolkien_and_the_Great_War
https://www.amazon.com/Tolkien-Great-War-Threshold-Middle-earth/dp/0618574816
And don't forget this collection from the Elder Days:
Not exactly an Encyclopedia, but The Atlas of Middle Earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad is excellent.
Everything is incredibly well sourced (including showing you exactly where in the texts she gets her information) and I personally consider it the most accurate and "essential" book on Middle Earth not written by a Tolkien. It has a ton of information, and maps to accompany all of it. It is a lot more than just maps though.
Looks like you can snag it used on Amazon for less than $10 too. https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Middle-Earth-Revised-Karen-Fonstad/dp/0618126996
I adore this adaptation, it was my first exposure to a Tolkien adaptation so it has always had a special place and as it didn't mess with my visual image of Middle-earth it worked well for me. I have ignored most illustration to maintain my own image over the years so a radio play is just wonderful.
An FYI for those interested. Like most adaptations, Tom Bombadil is once again left out but Brian Sibley regretted that decision and when he was asked to adapt Tales from the Perilous Realm he opted to adapt the Fellowship scenes involving Tom rather than the The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. It can be found very cheaply at Amazon and Sibley talks more about the series at his website.
Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_King_(1980_film)
Amazon: The Return of the King (Full Screen Animated) (Sous-titres français) [Import] https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00005MP5D/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_8D2cDbDK5KZZ0
I was able to find this by adding “Rankin Bass” to the search criteria. RB also did The Hobbit cartoon movie.
Right now you can get a high-quality paperback of it for under $15, definitely worth it.
That order is fine, but if you do that order you should skip the first two stories in Unfinished Tales (i.e. the two that concern the First Age). Those two will anyways be included in other books in your list, so you won't be missing out.
There are many other Tolkien books, but they're a lot less approachable than the ones you've listed, so you should probably read those first before deciding if you want more.
I have no comment regarding Howe vs. Lee, but there are other art books on Amazon. There also are books with Tolkien's own art, the most relevant of which would be The Art of The Hobbit and The Art of The Lord of the Rings, though others like Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth and Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator are also good.
The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad is a great book, and almost certainly the best map book currently available for Tolkien.
https://www.amazon.de/Unfinished-Tales-Christopher-Tolkien/dp/0008387958
It‘s a link from the german Amazon site because I couldn‘t find it on the english one. Seems to be illustrated by Alan Lee, John Howe & Ted Nasmith. I too am stoked to get this edition!
That's a thoughtful gift idea!
I think the edition with Ted Nasmith's illustrations is really nice. My own copies are just cheap paperbacks, but I've perused this version coveteously in a number of bookshops.
Nice hardcover with dust wrapper, good quality paper, fold out map, and the pictures, of course, are beautiful. There are some good images in the amazon reviews in the link.
I got really emotional when I heard him read the passages in this article. Especially the last video where he reads the end of LOTR.
You can get the first five volumes in a boxed set for a very reasonable price: Link (also available for the same price on Amazon)
The difficulty comes when when trying to get the remaining seven volumes. A further boxed set is available for the next four volumes (apparently it only contains half of Volume 9, which I was not aware of (thank you /u/Wiles_)) as 'The History of the Lord of the Rings" that is around $40 (Link). The remaining three are the real difficulty. Those have to be found individually I think, which involves some bargain hunting. All in all, you can manage to get them all for under $100, which is pretty costly, but not bad for a total of 12 volumes.
Maybe everyone's already seen this, but I was looking in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien earlier and stumbled on this bit, to his publisher when thinking about a sequel to The Hobbit:
>Do you think Tom Bombadil, the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside, could be made into the hero of a story?
Ding ding ding. We finally have a winner. This guy IS Bombadil!
His singing voice, his looks - PERFECT! Check out his house. "About 2,000 animals here. It's an animal sanctuary."
>is there a Sindarin name for the Hobbits
One perian, two or more periain, or when talking of "Hobbits" as a whole, Periannath or Pheriannath.
In Sindarin this literally means "halfling", but it's also one of Tolkien's linguistic jokes -
by fictional etymology "pherianath" is supposed to be the origin of the English word "fairy".
In real etymology "peri" is also "(In Persian mythology) a mythical superhuman being, originally represented as evil but subsequently as a good or graceful genie or fairy."
( - going with the theme that the later Gondorians didn't really know anything about kudugin except that they were semi-mythical creatures from far away who had had some big part in the War of the Ring.)
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Perian
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/peri?searchDictCode=all
Return to Aman https://archiveofourown.org/series/727971
Vignettes of the Blessed Realm. https://archiveofourown.org/series/803763 I forget if this had hobbits somewhere, but it was a good set of stories. I read the last one, "Conditional Release", first.
You have to read through a lot of garbage to find the gems in fanfiction, unfortunately. I used to read them quite a bit when I was younger, but after a while the mass amount of poorly written stories put me off.
One of the few gems that I do recall though, is "The Crossing of Celon": a short story about the fate of an elf who abandoned the sons of Dior in the woods after the sack of Doriath. It's short, well written, and feels like it fits into the universe/themes of the Silmarillion.
Probably under more recent cities, like the ruins that keep popping up in Beirut whenever something gets knocked down: http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g294005-i21023069-Beirut.html
Yet Tolkien in "The Monsters and the Critics" said he thought Beowulf "was inspired by emulation of Virgil". And Virgil's Aeneid was one of the models for the mythology for England Tolkien wanted to write. https://books.google.com/books?id=B0loOBA3ejIC&pg=PA695&lpg=PA695&dq=tolkien+aeneid&source=bl&ots=hiDA9F9h_b&sig=c7zr_gZVcKBQnWeHMRw_5-2xq8k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=4l-5VL3nGc76ggSM9YHABg&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&...
Librarian powers: Activate!
In addition to the Inter-library Loan suggestions, you might also check out WorldCat - think a "catalog of catalogs" which allows you to search most libraries at once and see what the closest library to you that holds a given book would be. Public colleges/universities (especially Land Grant institutions) will typically at least allow you to look at their materials on-site (and some might let you get a borrowers card for a small fee).
If you liked the Fingolfin/Morgoth fight, I might recommend that you track down The Lays of Beleriand and jump to the beginning of Canto XII of the Lay of Leithian (the story of Beren and Lúthien) where the fight is recounted in verse.
Edit - This part is short, only around 100 lines of the 4000ish lines of the overall poem it's in. The book also includes alliterative-verse (the same kind of poem as Beowulf, although in Modern English rather than Old English) versions of Túrin's story - also incomplete, though. That's why I linked to help find libraries rather than to Amazon, let you find the part I was pointing out without necessarily prompting a purchase for a small segment.
If you want to learn a version of Sindarin and/or Quenya that you can speak or write in, you will have to go with Neo-Sindarin and Neo-Quenya. These rely heavily on Tolkien's older linguistic notes and more dated concepts found in his early writings in order to fill in the gaps in the languages (as well as relying on a lot of educated guesswork). I recommend checking out A Fan's Guide to Neo-Sindarin if you want a good introduction to that!
Here is the graphic novel I know. It's very well done.
The Lord of the Rings is a novel in six parts (seven if you count the appendices). It is usually published in three volumes, though you can sometimes find it in a single huge volume (https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-J-R-Tolkien/dp/B001LAYALS)
Volume 1: The Fellowship of the Ring
- Book 1
- Book 2
Volume 2: The Two Towers
- Book 3
- Book 4
Volume 3: The Return of the King
- Book 5
- Book 6
- Appendices
Here's a link for the version on Amazon US.
To the ancient Egyptians, the hieroglyphs had power in of themselves. As Stephen King points out eloquently in On Writing, writing is magic: it gives us the power of telepathic communication across time and space. By inscribing symbols on paper, I can cause you to think of and visualize the things I thought of, even though you are years in the future and the width of the world away.
On the other hand, the ancient Babylonians seem to have regarded cuneiform as something you keep inventory records with.
I think Baldor panicked, lost his torch and got confused in the darkness due to ghost-inspired terror and couldn't find his way out again, not that he refused to leave because of his rash vow.
The one on my wishlist personally is the one illustrated by Tolkien himself. This is the special edition, but there is a standard edition that is much cheaper.
A quick google lead me to Amazon which is showing it as available for sale and that it was released in 2019.
Is that the one you're looking for or not?
The Alan Lee-illustrated Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is a great choice due to his sublime art. I'd also recommend the Ted Nasmith-illustrated Silmarillion for similar reasons.
I wholeheartedly recommend the 2020 HarperCollins Hardcover Boxed Set of <em>The Hobbit</em> + <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> illustrated by Alan Lee, along with the matching <em>Silmarillion</em> edition illustrated by Ted Nasmith.
These are my favorite books—not too expensive, but of good quality.
This one is great and the one I use for my re-reads. Cheap but sturdy, and it's easy to take with you!
Also Gandalf says they have to wear black cloaks to "give shape to their nothingness." His exact words.
Since we're having fun with dictionaries, here's Oxford again:
>nothingness /ˈnəTHiNGnəs/ The absence or cessation of life or existence:
Nope, nothing in there about mere invisibility.
I didn't, but I do have a pretty good book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Historical-David-Real-Life-Invented/dp/0062188372
The author of that book has been tweeting out some comments on the Pentateuch, including source criticism, for that past couple of years, and is now just starting Deuteronomy. It's worth checking out if you're interested in the subject.
The Folio Society set https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/the-lord-of-the-rings.html is one of a kind, but quite expensive and the Hobbit volume is separate.
Alternatively there’s a recent illustrated LOTR+Hobbit set that I really like https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Boxed-Illustrated/dp/0008376107
When somebody types Letters, in italics, they are referring to this book:
> it seems like there are some really valuable Tolkien insight into the lore.
Absolutely. There’s a tremendous wealth of info on the Legendarium buried in them.
> Is there a good reliable place for me to find them to read and take notes on?
They’re collected in *The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter with a little help from Christopher Tolkien. You can buy it here, or from any other reputable retailer.
These are modified versions of Caroline Minuscule, a 9th-century script which became the basis of modern lower-case. That g especially is characteristically an "insular" g, used almost exclusively in Anglo-Saxon England (and maybe Ireland? I forget).
You can get fonts of those free here: http://robert-pfeffer.net/schriftarten/englisch/
Note in particular the instructions on the site for activating stylistic set ss02 to get those characteristic insular e,g,r,s.
If you want to read more about the script (and the evolution of the Roman alphabet through the middle ages), I suggest Bernard Bischoff's Latin Palaeography: https://www.amazon.com/Latin-Palaeography-Antiquity-Middle-Ages/dp/0521367263/
I like the pocket editions: https://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Deluxe-Pocket/dp/0544445783 They are also sold at Target and Walmart, online at least. The covers are a really nice faux leather ish texture. Is that what it’s called?)
The font is a bit small, if that bothers you.
I like that all of them match, which is pretty much a guarantee if you get a box set (The pocket editions even have their own little half box that they can be stored in). Other than that, I think it’s just preference.
Worth noting that a Second Age book is slated to come out mid-November, though it's largely (entirely?) just a collection of materials previously published in diverse and scattered places.
https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Númenor-Other-Second-Middle-earth/dp/006328068X/
Seriously, just buy Fonstad's Atlas right now. Look how cheap it is! You won't have to do any printing and you'll get not just maps, but explanations of the maps. And SO MANY MAPS. All the maps. Maps of places, maps of populations, maps of battles! You will end up reading this thing on its own like a regular book. If you love Tolkien you need this book.