What belongs in your Tolkien library?

While moving recently, to a fourth-floor apartment with no elevator, I had to carefully evaluate which book — including which Tolkien books — are worth boxing, lifting and moving and keeping, in the face of space restrictions and physical exhaustion.

What's on your Tolkien bookshelf or what's in your Tolkien library? We take a look at the essential books that make up the core, the books that sit just outside the inner circle and then a lot of other books that fill out your shelf space. See the transcript for a full list of what this episode looks at.

These are works by J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien and Tolkien scholars. Not mentioned, and omitted by accident is the essential "Tolkien and the Great War," by John Garth and "The Atlas of Middle-earth" but, the last episode was dedicated to that key work. If other important works were missed send me at not at TheTolkienPodcast@gmail.com

THE LIST OF BOOKS UNDER DISCUSSION

*Tolkien And The Great War
*Atlas of Middle-earth
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings
The Silmarillion
Unfinished Tales
The Children of Húrin
Beren and Lúthien
The Fall of Gondolin
The Book of Lost Tales Part 1
The Book of Lost Tales Part 2
The Lays of Beleriand
The Lost Road and Other Writings
Morgoth's Ring and The War of the Jewels
The Shaping of Middle-earth
The Lost Road and Other Writings
The Return of the Shadow (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1)
The Treason of Isengard (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 2)
The War of the Ring (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 3)
Sauron Defeated (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 4)
Morgoth's Ring (The Later Silmarillion, Part One) (1993)
The War of the Jewels (The Later Silmarillion, Part Two) (1994)
The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996)The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (poetry)
Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham
Roverandom
The Fall of Arthur
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (edited Carpenter)
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter
Letters from Father Christmas 1976
J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator
Tolkien On Fairy-stories (his essay on fantasy literature)
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century 
The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New MythologySplintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World
Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien’s Mythology
The Art of The Hobbit and The Art of The Lord of the Rings
* These titles were omitted but are essential part of the Tolkien Library.

Transcript

Larry D. Curtis: 0:00

It is challenging in 2025 because of how familiar we all are with The Lord of the Rings, with Tolkien's uh even wider legendarium. It is difficult to imagine what it would be like to read the Fellowship of the Ring as it was first published, and to be going through the book and to not know the outcome and not know what the characters would do and not know what Boromir would end up doing, and not know who Aragorn was, not know quite the loyalty of Sam. It is a challenge to put yourself in that first-time reader's position and get to page, depending on your volume, you know, the 280s probably. When everyone gets together, all the different representatives of the peoples of Middle Earth get together under Elrond's roof to try to decide what to do with the newly discovered knowledge that Frodo Baggins is carrying the one ring. Big burden, a burden that the burden in general is a one of the themes of the entire book for sure. In cinema, we are well familiar with this part of the book because uh it's word for word almost. Frodo says, I will take the ring, though I do not know the way. It's hard for me to even say that out loud without hearing Elijah Wood's voice. Maybe that's the same for you, but it's in the book. And then Elrond raises his eyes and looks. Remember, readers known Elrond previously in The Hobbit. He's one of the anchors for people who are new to this book, so he's a familiar character. And he's not emphasized in the rest of the book, but to this point, he's pretty important. He's been talked about a lot. We're trying to get to his house a lot. We're sort of following the same paths of the Hobbit. And there's Elrond, wise old Elrond, who had good advice for the dwarves. He says this, he's gonna make some, I'm gonna read the quote. And he um he drops some names in here that readers would have no idea whatsoever uh Elrond was talking about. None. Not a hint, not a clue, not a whisper, no idea. But the quote is uh really cool, and of course, that's part of the magic of Tolkien, that he makes it seem like there is so much that he isn't telling. Anyway, Frodo says I will take the ring. But it is a heavy burden, so heavy that none could lay it on another. I do not lay it on you. But if you take it freely, I will say that your choice is right. And though all the mighty elf friends of old, Hador and Hurin and Turin, and Baron himself were assembled together, your seat should be among them. Close quote. So Elrond is telling uh Frodo, but he's definitely telling the reader how heavy this burden is. I mention all this because it's been quite a space, a few months, since I've managed to make an installment in the Tolkien podcast here, which I regret very much. But I have had burdens of my own. And one of those is that I've moved and uh I I live now in Salt Lake City instead of Midvale, which means nothing to most of you. But what it meant is that I had to move all my belongings, and like Frodo, it felt like a really heavy burden. And what's more, I had to carry. I the day that I came to sign papers for my new apartment. I was told, oh, the elevator's out and will be for six months. And I'm on the fourth floor with only a stairway to get from the ground to the top. So the burden was literally heavy. I didn't bear it alone, but it was still heavy and hard. It really was hard on my body, actually. One of the things I had to move was books, and quite a lot of those books, including the one I just read from, are heavy. And and Tolkien. There's quite a bookshelf of Tolkien. So I thought for today's podcast, we're gonna talk about the thing that's been so on my mind while I was moving. What are the essential parts of a person's Tolkien bookshelf? My name is Larry, and you are listening to the Tolkien podcast. I suppose there's a legitimate argument m argument to be made about whether the essential Tolkien book is the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings. But in my opinion, hands down, it's the Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit was a great way to introduce us to Middle Earth. But the book that really uh launched Tolkien into the stratosphere to one of the elite authors of all time, and certainly you of fantasy, but of literature uh in the 20th century. I think I think it's a well-made case, uh, not made by me but by others that Tolkien is the author of the 20th century. For lots of reasons that we'll explain in some or explore in some podcasts. But what it for me, it's the Lord of the Rings, is the essential book, it's the center of the Tolkien universe. And all the other things, and when I say things, I mean books, the written word, all the other things really just support that. But that is not to say in any way or in any way to diminish how essential the Hobbit is, because it is at the very center of everything, it's the very center of Tolkien. And we're talking about bookshelves. So I think every bookshelf, every Tolkien bookshelf, which uh hopefully is you know a Tolkien library, we could call it, and that doesn't mean it needs to be giant. By the way, another thing I did over the break here is I had to go to your I had to go to Austria for a wedding. Uh my some dear friends were uh married again, and one of them's from Austria, and it was such a delightful experience to be there and to see you know Europe again, and and um actually I know w those friends because of Tolkien. So that our friendship has far transcended just what Tolkien is, but it's really cool. And there were other friends there, Austrian friends, people who live there, that I met at a Tolkien event in Germany uh now quite a number of years ago. And it's really a beautiful thing to have friends, and this is absolutely a sidebar, but that's what Tolkien ought to do. That's what phantom fandom of any kind ought to do. It ought to expand your universe, it ought to be a way to secure friends, it ought to be a way to um you know have things to relate to with people. So that's very cool. And I was asked to give a speech at this wedding event, this celebration, which was such an honor, such a really lovely honor. And of course, books were central to the theme of what we talked about, and Tolkien was definitely mentioned. So none of that's off topic. It all feels really important, but it sure has um been a space since I've talked, and it's on my mind has been Tolkien and books and bookshelves and libraries. I did actually visit two libraries while I was in Europe. One was in Amsterdam that was absolutely astounding. It's a research library, and we were allowed to go in and look at the floors and floors of books and the and people at the bottom doing actual research from these incredible shelves. I would like to live there, please, or any library like it. I guess I really like books. Um, in fact, I'm look I'm kind of looking for a job, and I'm thinking a bookstore would be the place to be. The other bookstore, uh bookshelf library, I mean not bookstore, library, was an esoteric library that I visited also in Amsterdam. It was had giant books, like really, really big ones, as big as my like body cavity, my chest, my chin, and my waist, basically. It was wonderful. So books have been on my mind. There is really no doubt, there's a very little debate about which books make up the very central core of any proper Tolkien library, but we're gonna cover them anyway. So as I read through the list, you can think about which ones you have, which ones you would like to have, or maybe ones you don't care to have. I think a lot of Tolkien fans that I've known, uh Tolkienites, have taken a lot of pride in having that pretty cool bookshelf. So anyway, let's get to the list. I would say the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are definitively the basic foundation of any good Tolkien library. One of the challenges of my library, and I bet it's the same as many other people's, is that I have several volumes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and we can talk about those in detail, but maybe we won't. I can't be sure we'll get to that. So The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, which was published after Tolkien's death. It's fascinating how many of these books that we're about to talk about were published after Tolkien's death. When he passed away, there was just The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, and a whole lot of unfulfilled dreams and wishes on his part. The Silmarillion definitely qualifies as essential Tolkien reading. I think Unfinished Tales definitely qualifies as the core of a Tolkien library. Adding to that list or joining that list is The Children of Huron, Baron and Luthien, and the Fall of Gondolin. This might be an opportune time to mention, by the way, that none of this, having the right books or having any books, none of it matters, and you can be a Tolkien fan with no books, and nobody should tell you otherwise. And I do not believe, and I hope you don't either, and I hope you don't engage in this, that there's any part of you're not a real fan is not a real thing. People are whatever they want to be, however they want to be it, and that's totally fine. What I am talking about, though, are is a bookshelf that if you really love Tolkien books and you want them and you want to own them, this is sort of a way to go about it and to think about it. So there will be those who aren't familiar with the children of Huron, Baron, and Luthian and the Fall of Gonolin, and that's perfectly okay. A lot of that material is actually duplicated in other places, the Silmarillion, but here it's presented in a way that you can read it more like a story from start to finish with focus on certain characters, and the pleasure of reading those is much greater than, uh to me at least, than just reading bits and pieces and kind of piecing them together in your mind. It's a lot easier and it's a lot more clear and it's a lot more enjoyable. And thanks, Christopher Tolkien, for all that he's done. So we add the Silmarillion Unfinished Tales to Children of Furin and Baron and Luthian and the Fall of Gondolin. I don't know the page count, but that's a lot of content that was edited, perhaps uh embellished. That's there's some debate about that by Christopher Tolkien. I don't mean embellished actually, but um, some things had to be done, some bridges had to be built, or some pieces of a bridge had to be built to make transitions work and make those pieces work. So that's a lot of edited by Christopher Tolkien in there, and it's a lot of things that have been published a lot later than um the 20th century, which does a couple of things. It adds to Tolkien's relevance of the 20th century, but also makes him very relevant in the 21st century. And speaking of Christopher Tolkien, the next part of this, the sort of the next level of books, I like to think of it as a ring, right? The bullseye, or all the things we've talked about, just the ring outside of the bullseye, maybe, are is the history of the Middle Earth series, all edited by Christopher Tolkien. And those twelve volumes are not easy reading, they are not narrative form uh for that you can pick up and read from start to finish. They're scholarly. They're still interesting, they still have nuggets in them that are cool and new and different, but the reading of them is a little bit more like reading a textbook about a literary work, at least to me. But there are 12 of them. I'm gonna go through each of them by year, but I did want to mention that there's four of them that are considered kind of more essential, or at least more accessible. I think that's the better term. They are more accessible, and that is the Book of Lost Tales, part one and two. So maybe my four is five if parts one and two are different. The Lays of Baleriand, The Lost Road and Other Writings, and Morgoth's Ring and The War of the Jewels, which is kind of later Silmarillion material. So if I'm counting right, and I think I am, that gives us seven books that are at the center of the core of the dartboard, the bullseye, if you will, the bullseye of the target. Some of those edited by Christopher Tolkien. And then we get into the History of Middle Earth series, also called Home in print, H-O-M-E-L Capitals Home, the History of Middle Earth series. That's 12 volumes edited by Christopher, with four that I highlighted that are um they're probably most accessible. But of those four, the Book of Lost Tales, parts one and two, were published as separate books, so sort of that's five. So we either have seven plus four or seven plus five. I'll go with seven plus five. So we're up to twelve things uh in the sort of the outer, the circle right outside of the bullseye. By the time 1983 is when the Book of Lost Tales, the first part, part one, was published. And I was alive and I liked Tolkien, and I had read Lord of the Rings, and I had read The Hobbit, but the Silmarillion had was too hard for me. I was still a kid, young teenager, and um, and I wasn't watching the Tolkien publishing world like a hawk then, and I didn't realize there was so much more to come, but I want to go through the years. Preparing this list actually taught me something. It taught me how productive and how consistent and how hardworking Christopher was starting in 1983 with the Book of Lost Tales part one. Actually, it occurs to me as I'm talking that I don't really know what the publishing situation was like back then. I don't know if HarperCollins in the UK and Houghton Mifflin in the US, which is now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, you can check the spine to make sure they're authorized. I don't know if there was a great hunger for Christopher Tolkien's scholarly works. I think they clearly sold well enough to still be on bookshelves today, which is a pretty good sign all these years later. But I don't know if they were clamoring for Christopher to publish more. I know that the Tolkien community, which was a lot of scholarly types, were, and I know that his papers had been collected, Tolkien's J.R.R. Tolkien's papers had been collected, but I don't know what the publishers thought. I think I'd like to find that out someday. Maybe you would too. But maybe publishers and book publishers is the most boring and nerdy thing ever, and I'm just a big nerd. I paused my recording and I went back to probably look through some research I had done, and I am relatively certain now that I wasn't a minute ago, that most of these books that we're about to talk about did make it to the best sellers list. Maybe not number one, but they did sell. And uh maybe just initially, but they continue to sell, I know, because I know how Tolkien fans, Tolkienites, Tolkien readers continue to consume these things, which is why we're talking about them at all. Back to the list. I promise not to no more sidebars for the duration of this list. The Book of Lost Tales, part one, nineteen eighty-three published. The Book of Lost Tales, part two, nineteen eighty-four published. Christopher was busy. The Lays of Beleriand, 1985, published. The Shaping of Middle Earth, less accessible, a little nerdier, a little less easy to read, 1986 published. The Lost Road and other writings, one of those core four I mentioned, 1987 published. The next four volumes were very focused on the history of the Lord of the Rings, and they're all subtitled that. So The Return of the Shadow, 1988, Volume 1, The History of the Lord of the Rings. 1989 saw The Treason of Isengard, volume two. 1990 saw The War of the Ring, volume three, and 1992 saw Sauron Defeated, Volume 4, in the History of the Lord of the Rings, published. So that's a lot. Christopher's impressive. Morgoth's Ring was published in 1993. It's a Silmarillion-oriented book. And The War of the Jewels, later Silmarillion book, which is really part two. Both of those are part one and part two, in 1994. And then Christopher took, being the slacker that he is, I hope the sarcasm's obvious. He took 1995 off, and in 1996 he finished the 12 volumes, The Peoples of Middle Earth. And that concluded the 12 volume set of the History of Middle Earth series, which is the bullseye that I keep talking about. It's right outside. It's the circle just around the core of Tolkien's books. Now, Christopher did a these are say edited by Christopher, but there's a lot of him explaining things in commentary. And they trace the evolution of Tolkien's mythology. So the first four I mentioned that are most accessible, and then the whole volume is 12. I don't own all 12 of those. I've most read the Book of Lost Tales, part one and two, but I haven't read all of those the way that I feel like I should. But it also tells you something that I haven't, and they're not as easy to get. And certainly when people buy me gifts, which I'm easy to buy gifts for because Tolkien book is a pretty good way. Um, and you know, not a lot of you don't have to think too hard to know what I'll love. But uh nobody thought of those, and nobody certainly thought of the volume. I would love to get them in hardback. I think that's a probably uh like a goal I need to set, but as I am currently writing a book of my own about Utah having nothing whatsoever to do with Tolkien, I'm living uh on macaroni and cheese in my Salt Lake City apartment. And um soon I'm looking for work. Not soon, currently. So um, I don't know, maybe I better go donate plasma a lot before I can buy the 12-volume series of the history of Middle Earth. And I don't actually know that they're definitely in paperback often in bookstores. But this is another part of this discussion I wanted to have. If you went to your local Barnes and Noble or whatever bookstore, there's a really good used bookstore in Salt Lake. And when I say really good, I don't mean quite to the level of what you might find in New York City or quite to the level of Powell's bookstore in Portland, but good for here, and they have a lot of cool stuff and they have a lot of cool Tolkien. But what they don't have is every version or every copy of all 12 of those, or they don't have multiple sets of those different versions, and some of you don't care at all about sets or versions or editions. I do, actually. I really like having different versions, especially of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. What I listen, I'm not in a financial situation or life situation to do this, but I would love to collect uh versions of the Lord of the Rings from around the world, different languages, different covers. Russia, for example, had some really cool Hobbit stuff that I really loved. Uh and I would love to get my hands on some of that, different artwork and whatever. But uh that's not how that goes. I do have a couple of things in German. There are a couple of things written by J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm gonna have to say J.R. or Christopher every time to make it abundantly clear. But J.R.R. Tolkien also wrote a few things which I also consider essential, but they're not middle-earth. And so for some people they will have no interest, and for other people, they will definitely want to read them. Other fiction from Tolkien includes The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which is foundational to all of this and it's a poem, Smith Wooten of Major, and Farmer Giles of Ham and Rover Random, all little stories that Tolkien wrote, all insightful, all definitely J.R.R. Tolkien style and cool, but definitely not middle-earth, perhaps influential, and so for some people that will be essential in their bookshelf or library, and for other people they will not have any interest. And then there's an unfinished Arthurian poem, The Fall of Arthur, which is again fiction from Tolkien's hand, but some people won't care and others will. I happen to have that one, and I'm glad I do. I I personally also want all of those little little fictions, the adventures of Tom Bombadil, especially, but Smithwooten, a major in Farmer Giles of Ham and Rover Andom. I want to own them. I'm not as interested in collecting them, but if somebody accidentally handed me a first edition of any of those, I'd be that's pretty cool. And I'd kind of want those, you know. There's something about those um really old versions of all this before Tolkien was such a household name and his works were so familiar to everybody. You can also get those collected sometimes, um all in one book, which is an economical way to go about getting them. Uh, I'm not super familiar with all that. I'm not gonna lie and pretend that I know all the ins and outs of those, but they're available if you want to get them. You can sometimes see them at Barnes and Noble in the Tolkien section. And the only reason that's true is because they continue to sell. The longevity of the name, the value of on a bookshelf of JRR Tolkien is pretty impressive. But I think the better way to get those probably maybe because it's more fun to hunt and find, or maybe just because uh you maybe you don't want to pay premium prices, but it's fun to find those at used bookstores, and sometimes they will be really inexpensive, and sometimes you can even find them at like garage sales or estate sales when people are just trying to get rid of books. A little bit how I had to evaluate each and every book that I was willing to carry up four flights of stairs, and I did get rid of some few, a few. I gave them away or I put them in like those library boxes out, but I lost some books. I don't think I lost any Tolkien books. I just don't think I could do it, and I was willing to carry them up the stairs and also know that I was gonna eventually have to carry them down because I'm not in a permanent residence here. Ay, ay, aye. There are a few other things by Tolkien's hand that are really important, really central to him. Uh his essay on fantasy literature called Tolkien on Fairy Stories or on Fairy Stories is, I believe, absolutely essential to read. I'm 99% sure you can just read it online if you only want to read it. Um, but it but it really explains, it has a lot to do with his philosophy and thoughts and things that he it helps you understand Tolkien better. It helps you understand the Lord of the Rings better, it helps you understand The Hobbit better. And then he wrote also The Monsters and the Critics and other essays. That's a book that you could own, but I'm pretty sure you can find a lot of these collected in one place. There are also a couple of publications from him that he wrote that are not stories exactly, but are letters. One of these is called Letters from Father Christmas. He used to write letters to his children as Father Christmas. That was published in 1976, I think. And it depends on the version you get or the edition you get, or the it's been published a few times, but that will include a lot of his art. He would do some lavish uh illustration and uh I don't know what to call it, but art to go along with his Christmas letters to his children. Now, those aren't they have nothing to do with Middle-earth, but it's a really great glimpse inside his imagination and also um I would say kind of revealing about the kind of person that he was, whimsical and fun and intelligent, and a guy who likes to make legends. More important to Middle-earth readers is the letters of J.R.R. Tolkien were edited by Humphrey Carpenter. These are letters that he wrote to people, often fans or people who are into Middle Earth, or sometimes friends, or different, you know, as he would show his manuscript around, and they would ask questions about Middle Earth or the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, and he would reply with these letters and answer them. He also had a lot of correspondence with his publishers. Some of these letters are pretty famous. They end up on TikTok or um Instagram a lot. People influencers, not he shouldn't call them influencers, people seeking influence, like to use little bits from these letters. It's also on um YouTube and YouTube Shorts. They like to use bits of these letters to, you know, they make really good teases for the audience. Five reasons why Tolkien hated Disney or whatever. Uh anyway, you'll see those a lot. And almost always they come from these letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. I grabbed my copy of Letters, which is a little old, actually. There's um newer versions available, and I think the newer versions have a couple of additional letters. There's no way, obviously, well, maybe it's not obvious. There's no way that every letter that J.R.R. Tolkien ever wrote would have been in this book from Humphrey Carpenter back in the day. So some have been found, sometimes in copies of books or in somebody's old study. I mean, this is what happens when people are maybe less famous than they're going to be, and they write these letters to people. Now, I guess it would be emails. I wonder if some contemporary author will someday have a like George R. R. Martin, if it'll be if there'll be some book and it'll say the emails of George R. R. Martin. That would be really interesting. He uh fun fact, I'm sure I've even said this, but it tickles me. When I first read Game of Thrones, I in fact sent him an email, and he used to try to reply to everybody's letters back then, so he was really nice, and I did get a reply from him. I have no idea where that letter is. It's probably in an email that no longer exists, I'm afraid. And uh that's pretty nice. So Tolkien did that. Tolkien scholars Christina Skoll and Wayne Hammond did an index for Carpenter's book. I don't know when this index appeared. I have the first paperback edition printed in America, but I think this was the first the first edition was printed in 1981. And I'm not sure they knew how popular it would be, but it's still in print and it's still in libraries. Uh it's definitely in Amazon, obviously. But Skull and Hammond, uh pretty great Tolkien scholars, we're definitely going to talk about them, created this index. So if you wanted to see what Tolkien says about an atomic bomb, you look up atomic bomb, it'll tell you the pages. Or if you want to see what he had to say about wizards, you look that up, it'll give references for wizards. Well, I thought it would be fun. I looked up Disney for one of these famous ones. Because I don't, I guess we talk plenty about like Tolkien's lore, but this is just kind of funny. So he says, pretend this is in uh um his his voice, which it would be ridiculous for me to imitate, but he talking about these illustrations, he downplays his own talent. Alan and Unwin thought perhaps he would like to illustrate his own Hobbit book, and the American publishers wanted, I think, six or some number of color illustrations, but Tolkien says, Well, I have these pictures, but I'm terrible, which he wasn't, and they're not really illustrations, and they're beautiful, and they're really cool. Uh it's too bad he thought that. But quote, Tolgan says, It might be advisable rather than lose the American interest, to let the Americans do what seems good to them. As long as it was possible, I should like to add, to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios. For all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing. Tolkien didn't like Disney, and he I'm pretty sure that Sims from the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Dwarfs, I think he would have felt were silly. But actually they were silly. That was kind of the point. And so uh that Disney did exactly what it wanted, and that's exactly what Tolkien did not want. While we're in the letters and kind of biography section, uh Christina Skull and Wayne Hammond are they wrote a book called J.R.R. Tolkien Artist and Illustrator, which took those same probably things he had sitting in a drawer that he maybe didn't want to publish and published them in 1995. And this isn't a deep uh scholarly work, but it is definitely uh, I don't know, it kind of looks at his art. And it's been a while since I've read it, but I think it points out pretty clearly that, hey, this guy's a pretty good artist. He he did what he did, but he had some unique talents, and this is a guy who just maybe, if he had been open or confident in his drawing, which again I think are pretty skilled, if he had been confident with those and published them with his Hobbit books, the conversation we have about Tolkien today might be different. He might be better known as an illustrator and uh an artist, not better known than he is as a writer, but I mean mm, a lot of people don't realize how really good he was and how iconic uh what he drew was. And that isn't to say he was a renaissance painter. He's not Michelangelo, but he was he created really iconic images uh that are used a lot in his books, and it's pretty in vogue these days to use them on the covers of his hardbacks, in fact. By the same authors, there's another art and reference book. It's The Art of the Hobbit and The Art of the Lord of the Rings by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Skull. And it's the same thing. It really looks at how Tolkien drew his own stuff. I definitely recommend that book. Well, I guess I recommend all these books. I wouldn't hold that as the most essential, but it really is interesting and beautiful. And there was a really nice edition published in the last five years that it's that's probably I don't know, the one to go look for. And that is the kind of book sometimes that you can find used, or you can find even at a at a bookstore discounted if it's been on the shelf too long or something. It's that's a fun one to hunt for. We now get into a an area of books that Tolkien didn't write, neither JRR or Christopher Tolkien didn't write, but they're still essential things about Tolkien. So I guess these are academic works. One of the early books is written by Tom Shippy, who is a pretty prominent Tolkien scholar now. Like he's the one the public kind of understands as a Tolkien scholar. And when the Amazon series was kind of in its formation stage, and they were telling us how awesome they were, they got Tom Shippy to kind of make some language uh and use, I don't know, kind of some preview stuff to make it seem like they were really going to be scholarly in their approach to this thing, but they really weren't gonna be scholarly. I mean that's not a criticism, it's just that's just not what it is. It's an entertaining show meant to entertain. But they trotted Shippy out to say, like, see, look how. Scholarly, we are, and then he said something I think on a blog, or I can't remember where, but they didn't like that, so they kind of cut him loose, and then he was then he was really free to talk, and he was like, Look, I never was involved like in that way on the show. This is pretty interesting. But the reason he is so prominent is because he wrote a book in 1982 called The Road to Middle Earth, Colonel How J.R.R. Tolkien created a new mythology. You'll often see that just called The Road to Middle Earth. And Shippy's book is really solid and good, recommended. There's a lot of books because of the success of things like that and because of the title. So this is published by Tolkien's people, right? This is Shippy's publishers. Uh he's like a real academic, but you'll see a lot of books on bookshelves that will say things like the bestiary of Tolkien, or the Tolkien Bestiary, or the Three Minute Tolkien, or The People's Guide to Middle Earth, which by the way is from thewondering.net, which is a place I was really involved with, and that's a real book. The Three Minute Tolkien's a real book. And then there's a guy named David Day, who, as far as I know, is nothing but a cataloger, and he has used Tolkien's content over and over and over, and and book publishers, not the authorized ones, but they are really good at uh sort of making it these attractive Tolkien titled something or other books and putting them out. And David Day's name is often attached, and I don't have anything for or against David Day, I don't know what to say, but it's a catalog more or less, and those are on the same bookstore shelves and often are probably confused by people who think, oh, this is it. This is the ultimate Tolkien explanation. Well, they're not. They are um it's like when Life magazine publishes like John Lennon, the poet of the ages or something like that, or when Ozzie Osborne died, suddenly Time magazine has an Ozzy Osborne issue. So those are sort of the David Day books that you'll see. But we're talking about Tom Shippy after all. So Shippy wasn't done. As the Peter Jackson movies approached, as as word got out, as the internet exploded, as Tolkien fans all over were excited to hear that there was going to be a big budget adaptation, and maybe it wasn't gonna suck. Suddenly Tolkien was hot in the news again, all over for whatever reason. Entertainment news, entertainment magazines on both sides of the ocean. And if you were around in 1999 while we were hot for uh Tolkien and Tolkien movies, it was also the you know the final couple of years of the century of the 20th century. And so, as anyone does, especially media, they start to take polls and they start to ask people, you know, the hundred greatest movies of the 20th century, the hundred greatest novels of the 20th century. Well, they asked, I think first in the UK, they asked uh readers their favorite book uh of the 20th century, and Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings, won that poll, which really bothered a bunch of academics who was like, well, that's fantasy. That can't be the greatest book. What about Hemingway? Which incidentally, Hemingway and Tolkien have a lot more in common than you might think, writing about wars and the destruction of the 20th century. And don't uh sue me because I'm not a Hemingway expert, but um, Tolkien is definitely through the Lord of the Rings writing a lot about really what the 20th century was. So when these polls would start to come out and Tolkien would win them, best favorite books or whatever, you know, what about to kill a mockingbird? Well, it made the list. What about Animal Farm? Well, it made the list, but Tolkien won. And so uh that was quite a thing. And they kept making new polls. Some of these people who I don't know, we'll call them book lovers, academics maybe would make more polls and be like, you know, well, we'll show them. And then uh what about the Great Gatsby? Great book, by the way. But Tolkien would win these polls. So Shippy had been preparing surely a book uh about Tolkien called J.R.R. Tolkien, Author of the Century. And I can't recommend that book enough. Uh Shippy's other book's great, but this Author of the Century book, I hold in elite levels, it's a it's essential. Like you must you must read this to really understand Tolkien and to understand his impact. That's just the beginning of that. Another scholar who, with a pair of books that are essential, I think, in in academic or critical works, but also really great to read is Verlin Flieger. She is a professor in the United States. Um, and she's older than me. I don't want to say that she's older, but she's older than me. Uh, she wrote, probably most famously, Splintered Light, logos and language in Tolkien's world, and which is about light and darkness and how Tolkien uses them. That's uh quite a treat, actually. I don't see it at bookstores, though. That is not something I've uh recall seeing at Barnes and Noble. I did check, of course, because we don't have to rely on Barnes and Noble anymore. I sure hope the day doesn't ever come when we can't go to bookstores. But if you look on Amazon, you can definitely get uh Flieger's books. The other one that she wrote in 2005 is called Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology. Um, those are both five-star ratings, like not 4.7, those are solid five-star ratings at Amazon. And you can order them and uh read them, uh, recommended and definitely you know important. And plus, I've only seen her interviewed. I haven't interviewed her. Maybe we should get her on this show. I kind of bet we could. But she seems like such a lovely person, and she has written lots of essays, lots of things about fantasy and literature, slash fairy stories. Uh, speaking of which, she ties into another really great um Tolkien scholar that I definitely want to highlight, and some books that are really essential to me, things that are beloved, I should say, beloved to me. Anyway, Flagger did edit a book. I mentioned previously that Tolkien gave an essay, wrote an essay, or delivered a speech called On Fairy Stories. So Flagger and Douglas A. Anderson co-edited a book that you can grab that you can get. I assume on Amazon, maybe other places, called Tolkien on Fairy Stories with commentary from the two of them. I mentioned Anderson because he's the one person that's a Tolkien scholar that I've had the pleasure to actually meet, had lunch, really talk to. Uh I can remember that clearly. It's uh really a a man, a person that I liked a lot. But more than that, he has produced and then updated you know, more recently, the annotated hobbit, which I again I just can't recommend enough. And it's kind of a soft entry into the world of Tolkien scholarship. So if you get the annotated hobbit, you'll have it uh and be able to read the Hobbit. And then there's notes in the margins that are underneath that sometimes are quite scholarly and sometimes offer fun trivia about the very text that you're reading as you read it. I think I'll grab that and make an example, give you an example. It turns out that I have a what's called an advanced reading copy, and I mentioned that not to brag, although I feel pretty happy about it, but because what I read may not be the final version. So if you have a version of this same book, please understand that sometimes things change between uh almost printed and printed. So you know, cut me and the publisher and yourself some slack if things don't match up. Anyway, here is a book that was first published by the Houghton Mifflin Company, now called Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, in September of 1988. And that was the 50th anniversary of the first American publication of The Hobbit, if that makes sense. But when you get a version now, the second edition has has had wholesale changes made. I would say every section's different. So the point of that is that it's modern, it's updated, it's new, it's uh new and improved. As I've pulled this out to thumb through it, I'm I'm stuck. I got stuck right in the introduction because there's all these really cool things. Uh a little note, for instance, that says there are at least two printings of the 1938 Houghton Mifflin edition of the Hobbit. The earliest printing has a bowing hobbit on the title page, while the other variants have instead the Houghton Mifflin Company colophone, uh a seated figure playing a flute. So I don't know. I didn't know that. I just I guess I knew that once, but I was reminded anyway. I can't even get through the introduction. I find it's really fascinating. But let me give you a super simple sample of what's in this book. Page one or chapter one, an unexpected party. First sentence in a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. This is immediately followed by a one. And then over in the margin on the page, if you go over there to one, there's two for this whole page, it says the opening paragraph has become so widely known that in 1980 it was added to the 15th edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. The first sentence is recognized in many languages, of which the following is a small selection French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish. Uh I it actually has all those languages printed, and I wasn't going to embarrass myself or be useless to the listener by trying to pronounce them, but that's pretty cool. On the same page, note to talk it's about Bag End. It says Bilbo's comfortable hobbit hole inevitably recalls the similarly cozy underground homes of Badger and Mole in the Wind in the Willows, published in 1908 by Kenneth Graham. The name of Bilbo's home, Bag End, even echoes the name of Mole's Mole End. So close quote, but I hope that gives you a little flavor of the annotated hobbit. And again, just can't recommend it enough. One of the challenges for me as I do a podcast, my desire is to make it engaging and informative and hopefully brief. But I I hopefully I succeed on the first two, but I definitely fail on the last one. And as I watch how long this is getting, uh we're not done yet either. And and so I think I try to speak really quickly, and that's probably not helpful. Probably I can pause and probably I could slow down just a bit. But I am excited about what I'm telling you. So I guess what I'm asking is for a little patience and forbearance. So I'm doing my best over here. So related to Douglas A. Anderson's The Annotated Hobbit is the J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, which comes in two books. One is a reader's guide and one is a chronology. I think I'd like to talk about the chronology first. This is a seven, maybe eight hundred-page book. It's remarkable. And the two books are together in a hard case. I don't know if they're in paperback or not, but the hard backs are beautiful. One gold with a silver Tolkien symbol on it, black on the spine, and the other silver with a gold Tolkien stamp on it, black on the spine. The chronology starts in 1889 with the birth of Edith Bratt, who would later become Edith Tolkien. This is before J.R.R. Tolkien is born, but this book chronicles pretty exhaustively, exhaustively makes it sound like it's bad, pretty thoroughly, the life of Tolkien, uh some of the major landmarks. So I thought I would read one uh sample. It's November now, so I thought I just kind of opened up to November 1967. I was hoping to get the same day and date, but it but it isn't in there. But I liked this November 24, 1967. Smith of Wooten Major is published in the United States. Tolkien writes to Terence Pratchett, later himself a prominent fantasy author. Larry, not the book now. That's Terry Pratchett, of course, the very famous fantasy author. Tolkien wrote to him, thanking him for the first letter Tolkien has received about Smith of Wooten major. Quote, you evidently feel about the story very much as I do myself, Tolkien wrote, and that letter is in the George Allen and Unwin archive that Harper Collins has. Tolkien writes to the the professor in Florida in a previous entry. A professor in Florida wrote to him, I'm back to quoting, giving permission to use names from his books in the planned land development. Joy Hill, who is a publishing partner, writes to Tolkien, poems and songs of Middle Earth will probably not be issued in Britain until March 1968 because of a royalty problem. With another letter of the same date, Joy Hill returns a copy of Shannon Doa Tolkien had lent her. Next entry is 27 November 1967. Tolkien writes Joy Hill. He thinks that it would be simpler. He wants a bunch of copies of Smith of Wooten Major sent to certain people. Um it lists all those people. One of the prominent names is W. H. Auden, one of Tolkien's contemporaries and uh author of Note. Quote, he is willing to meet Fro Caro, I hope I said that right, and suggests the most suitable dates and times. Rayner Unwon, who has just returned from the United States, writes to Tolkien. He thinks that the agre that agreement is close with United Artists for the Lord of the Rings film rights. Close quote. One of these podcast episodes has to be has to be about all the film rights and Tolkien uh for Lord of the Rings. But it was a hot property way back in 1967. You probably know it's fun to say out loud, but at some point the Beatles were going to be the four hobbits. Uh the book chronicles all the way through 1974. Um the I think the last entry is that Tolkien is quite distressed that people have his house number uh near Oxford, and he would like it very much if they didn't, and it's causing him a lot of trouble. By now, fans were um big. There is a big fandom, and that really, especially for an older gentleman who likes his solitude, could have been problematic. It is interesting, too, that there is a very much like in the appendices of the Lord of the Rings, there is the family tree of the Tolkens, stretching back before John Ronald Rule Tolkien and Edith Bratt. It's fun to see his children, John Francis, Michael Hillary, Christopher Rule, and Priscilla all have now passed. At the time of this publication, that was not the case. Um Michael passed in 84. Um, it is fun to see that from Michael Hillary came Joanna and Judith and George, and Michael George, not George Michael, um, and from Joanna, there was uh who married Hugh Baker, the sons Royd and Michael. And I have been fortunate enough to call those two friends. Royd uh is still a friend, and Michael has passed tragically. So that's really fun for me, but it probably is really fascinating for other people as well. And then there's uh extensive bibliographies, whole, I mean hundreds, it's now up to 900 pages by the time we get to the index. So it's it's really quite a scholarly work, and I think that future Tolkien scholars will use it and pull it out. But for average old people like me, I don't know if I'm average, I think I might be a little bit of a nerd, but I'm not a super nerd for Tolkien. There's people that know so much more scholars, uh, but uh I think I'm a regular Joe with an interest, and it's really fascinating. So that's the chronology half of that Skull and Hammond book. The reader's guide half checks in at more than 1200 pages. It lists pretty sure it was published in 2006. It is dedicated to Rainer Unwen, whose name we just used. They called him a friend and a mentor. And Skrull and Hammond um have created this, it's alphabetical, this extensive uh I don't know, man, it's it's a little hard to explain this reader's guide, this index. So if you want to know things about Tolkien, you can look them right up. I opened the first page, uh, one that's really interesting and related to the topic of this podcast about books. And so the first uh entry is a guy by the last name of Abercrombie, and I don't know anything about him, so we're gonna skip that. But it goes right to the ace books controversy, which I know a thing or two about, and which I have those ace books on my bookshelf, which are paperback. Forgive me while I read. I I try not to read too much, but I there's no way to convey what this is without doing that. Ace Books controversy in bold, period. When Lord of the Rings was first issued in the United States 1954 through six, its publisher, the Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston, chose to import printed sheets from Great Britain for binding domestically rather than newly typeset and a print and print a separate edition. Hope that didn't I hope that made sense. They had long imported copies of The Hobbit and Farmer Giles of Ham and continued to do so for the Lord of the Rings through the 50s and the early 60s. For a work as unusual as The Lord of the Rings, importation in the first instance presented less financial risk. But in the long run, to this time, it was more economical for Houghton Mifflin to import sheets than to print their own, and to the advantage of George Allen and Unwen, the publishers, as well as exporters of the books and of Tolkien, because it lowered costs to both of his publishers and made his books more affordable to readers. So that's just the beginning of this quite long entry about the Ace Paperback edition. But now I feel like I have to finish the story, but I surely can't read it. I can't read pages and pages of this. There was a manufacturing clause in the United States in those days to protect U.S. manufacturing, and uh Britain had it the same way. It also applied to musicians, incidentally. So if a band uh toured it to the U.S., another band had to tour from the U.S. back to Britain. Back to yeah, back to the United Kingdom, I should say. And uh so this this clause was also in the works. And so uh the copyright law, an old U.S. copyright law that tried to protect these, um it limited the number of printed editions that could be brought in. To make a long story short, except that's already impossible, but to try to make a long story shorter, in 1965, Houghton Mifflin knew that perhaps the copyright could be challenged, though they thought, and Alan and Unwen thought, that that was unlikely that any reputable publisher would try to publish these works. Nevertheless, they asked Tolkien to add some things like an index for the Lord of the Rings and to provide some extra material so that they could resubmit to the copyright office and make sure that was safe. But before Tolkien could do that, Ace Books in New York, who's a well-known publisher of science fiction, issued their version of the Lord of the Rings starting in May 1956, and at the very cheap price of 75 cents. They said that Ace said that it was in the public domain, and therefore anybody could publish it without permission. This was immediately criticized in the media. Um it was pointed out to Ace that they were paying no royalties to Tolkien for his works. And they said, Well, we'd be happy to pay royalties, but they weren't paying any royalties to Tolkien for his works. So in October of 1965, Ballantine Books published these paperbacks. They had already published The Hobbit, they published these little paperback versions of the Lord of the Rings. That happens to be the ones that first fell into my hands as a kid. And in those, it says in the front, a definite reply to the Ace Books situation. This paperback edition and no other has been published with my consent and cooperation. It goes on, but that's what it says. And as a kid, pretty young kid, I noticed that, and I thought, what the heck? Why is Tolkien writing about that? What's been done? I didn't know any of the story, and I wouldn't know it for many years. But that is what was printed in every edition of the book to try to take it away from Ace. Tolkien also started to tell American readers and others, I guess anyone who would listen, that he never even got a note from Ace before they published his work, which he said was at the very least discourteous. And a groundswell of support was generated for Tolkien. So Ace offered to pay royalties, and Tolkien and Allen and Unwin decided to accept the royalties if they would stop publishing his books. So they um negotiated and they came to an agreement. And I think Tolkien, well, it says according to this, I just looked, it said that Tolkien um received more than $9,000 in royalties on the sales, and it was formally announced by Ace Books in '96. Sorry, '66. So Ace agreed to pay a percentage of royalties and never to republish those books, just to sell them until they were sold out, which they did. And that was the great Ace Books controversy. But what it did for Tolkien is give him a lot of publicity and a groundswell of support, as I said, that made people sympathetic to his cause. And any almost any publicity is good publicity. So those Ace Books actually helped launch Tolkien in a big way in the United States, and uh it sure made sure the publishers had everything in order. But they actually also won a court ruling that said they indeed did indeed hold the copyright to the Lord of the Rings. Now that's a fun little story, but the point, the point of telling the story is that that's what is in the reader's guide. That's what you can learn in that book, which is crazy. There's also a whole section on adaptations, which actually is dated. I I think it would need to be revised. It talks in there about Salzance holding the copyright. And um interestingly enough, one of the podcasts that I listened to, and there's not many, but one of the ones I listen to that I really love is called The History of Rock and Roll and 500 Songs by Andrew Hickey. And in the latest version of that, it's about Credence Clearwater Revival and Proud Mary. And Salzonce, none other than Salzantz, who who had and used and wielded and made a lot of money off the Tolkien uh movie rights and adaptation rights. Salzantz is a key figure in that Credence Clearwater Revival story. And um the short version is John Fogarty hated Salzonce with all his heart, might, mind, and strength. Hated that guy. And uh I actually dealt with the Salzonsk company, Tolkien Enterprises. It was a company made just to administer that shell, and they were really nice to me, actually. They were kind of great. And um they, of course, now they don't own the rights anymore. Salzant's past, and the rights are now held by a video game company in Sweden. I think I can't think of a much more valuable property, and I it sold for a massive amount of money. Maybe one of these podcast episodes will do on adaptations. That would be a really fun topic. Anyway, hopefully that gives you a flavor of the Tolkien Companion and Guide. The two books, which I have in a set that came together, and hardback, I'm sure it was the first edition, retailed for $100.50 for each book, and they're big, heavy hardbacks, more affordable and probably in some ways more accessible. The same two authors, Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Skull. And interestingly enough, sometimes Skull's name is first, and sometimes Hammond's. But the Lord of the Rings, a reader's companion, is very much like an annotated Hobbit. It's very much like an annotated Lord of the Rings. The format is different because of the size of the book, but it was published in 2005, I'm pretty sure. And uh then, well, a paltry $30, but that's very much worth your time. And I think I I think I've explained the detail that these scholars have gone in. So hey, I just went to Amazon because that's what you do, and I looked up that skull and Hammond JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide box set, and they're different actually now. The the reader's guide is A through M in one volume and N through Z in another volume, and then the chronology is a third volume. So it is now a three-volume box set, and it retails for $126.04, or you can get it used for $103. So I'd probably get it used, and I'd probably wish I wish that it were digital, and I wish that it were in paperback so that I could beat a copy up, because I don't want to beat up the copy that I have. Anyway, that's that's the latest. So what else possibly could I have to say? You ask. Well, I'm glad you did ask because there are several things. At Amazon, for example, while I looked that up, there's a whole bunch of other books that are there. For example, Tolkien's World from A to Z, The Complete Guide to Middle Earth, not published by uh his publishers. That's just what somebody else published. Now, there's nothing wrong with having that on your bookshelf. In fact, you can have it delivered tomorrow for $20.46. But uh, and I'm sure Robert Foster or whoever made that um guide with great care, but it feels like it's not adding to the scholarship, and certainly not in the same way. It probably features, you know, like characters and says Aragorn. Aragorn was also called Strider or things like that. But they do have uh Ted Naismith illustrations, so that's always beautiful. There's lots of Tolkien product out because it still makes money. There's also lots of different editions of the books that are from Tolkien. So I have an embarrassing number of Lord of the Rings versions. I still have some that are in shrink wrap that I'm why would I open them? Why would why would I expose them? They're perfect. I, in fact, said earlier that I didn't give away any of my Tolkien books, and as I think about it, I definitely did. When I made the move, I did get rid of some of my Tolkien editions. Um did uh not my Tolkien editions, my Lord of the Rings editions. Uh at least one little set I gave either to a child or I gave away. I can't recall because it it I have uh too many. It's silly, in fact. Um, another book that I really have and that I love is Bilbo's Last Song, which is $10, and I don't know who published that, but it's it's uh uh Bilbo's farewell to Middle Earth, and it's a little tiny book for ten dollars, and I think it's beautiful. And um, I just felt emotional talking about it. I really like it. And there's other, I don't know, there's all kinds of stuff. There's also like leather journals with Tolkien symbolism on them, and there's very many, very many, it's probably not great English, but it sure seems like very many versions of paperbacks, and some people want to have all of them, you know? Some people want to have every single one of them. Uh I don't, but I also I wouldn't hate it if I did. And what I do think is really cool are foreign language editions. And I said I have a couple of things in German which are really cool. The other thing that you can have on your bookshelf, and I definitely do, is the audio versions on CD, which now seems quaint and outdated. Uh, but they do look good on a shelf. Uh like like the BBC versions of the Hobbit, there's all kinds of different audio versions that are available. I actually quite like Andy Circus' audio version of the Silmarillion. I think it's great. I think it's I'm I know for sure I've said it in previous episodes of this podcast. I think it's the best way to tackle, the easiest way to tackle the Silmarillion, at least the first time, to get a feel for the pronunciation so that you're not stumbling through words. There's lots of options. But David Day's name appears all over on that Tolkien bookshelf, and it it sort of hurts me that Skol and Hammond and Doug A. Anderson and all these um real scholars, Verilun Flieger, Flieger, I just said her name wrong, do all this work, and um and somebody else just makes an encyclopedia A to Z. It's not the same. There's also a whole other kind of tie-in book that are related to the Lord of the Rings films, and there's many of those, and they sold very well. And in the context of the scholarship that we're talking about, maybe those books don't measure up. But for visuals and beauty, um, the Fellowship of the Ring of Visual Companion, for example, a movie companion, is really interesting and really cool. And a lot of the talents of the people behind the scenes on the film, people who are craftsmen or weapons masters, I guess they call those Smiths. I guess that's what they call that. Um, a lot of those talents are highlighted. Andy. Circus wrote a book called Uh The Making of Gollum, How He Made Movie Magic. And it's a really fascinating read. It's really good, I think at least. And so there's lots of those kind of tie-in books that also could be on your bookshelf and are on my bookshelf. I think they may not have the lasting value that they might have seemed like they might have in 2003 or four, but uh they're pretty cool. And sometimes I, for some reason, have multiple copies. I don't even know how that happened. They were gifts. Almost everything on my Tolkien bookshelf is a gift, by the way. And uh I encourage you to make friends who give you Tolkien books as gifts as well. Earlier on the podcast, I seemingly flippantly mentioned Ernest Hemingway and J.R.R. Tolkien in the same breath, influential writers of the 20th century. And Hemingway, no doubt, changed prose uh forever. He kind of rewrote the rules and did what he did. Uh he's a tremendous writer, and if you haven't read him, you're doing yourself a misservice. But Tolkien was also a tremendously influential and powerful writer of the 20th century, and his he sustains into the 21st century, both men do. They both were men who were sent to war. They were both men who suffered war. Tolkien lost all his friends. Hemingway wrote directly about what he saw, while Tolkien wrote fantasy, uh fairy stories, if you will, a way to escape. And Tolkien also wrote in his essay that not only is it not um a bad thing to escape, but any prisoner would not only want to escape but to take many others with him. That is what Tolkien did. He escaped some of the horrors of war, and he took many others with him, many of us still. And as we face pretty challenging times currently, um these same escapes are pretty useful. I have one little last story about one little last book that I've mentioned already. When I had a conversation with Douglas A. Anderson, he talked about Tolkien's poetry and taught me something that I've never forgotten, that often Tolkien was writing in the form of Old Norse or Old English or Middle English, so that when we read his poems, he's following that form to the letter. He's a genius at it. The problem is nobody who reads it can recognize it. Nobody who reads it knows that it's an old English form. Well, there's such a poem that Tolgan wrote early in his career, according to Schull and Hammond, it was written as early as the 1920s or the 1930s, and it was written in the form of, or actually in Old Norse. The title in English is West Over Sea, and hopefully that resonates or was West Over Sea, and hopefully that resonates with Tolkien readers. But later, after he knew the ending of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien reworked the poem into a form that we can read since I'm a little rusty on my old Norse, and it's called Bilbo's Last Song. Now, either Tolkien elected not to publish it at the end of the Lord of the Rings, or it came later after he had written the book and then contemplated the poem and converted it to be Bilbo's last song. In his later years, 1968 specifically, Tolkien elected to move. He also had gained a measure of fame and had a cult-like following, at least, if not a big popular following. And he received lots of letters from fans, including, as we read previously, Terry Pratchett. So Tolkien had a secretary, Joy Hill, to help him answer all these letters and to deal with things, and plus he was an aged man. He was born in the 19th century, for goodness sake, in South Africa. So he was an aged man. He became close to the secretary, as did his wife Edith. In fact, they, according to accounts, considered her almost as a second daughter. So when they were moving and she was helping, there a slip of paper came out that was this poem that was Bill Beau's last song. Eventually Tolkien gave it to her, gave the poem to Joy Hill, and gave her the copyright. And he said, uh, after he passed that she could do whatever she wanted with it, keep it, throw it, publish it, whatever. So on September 2nd of 1973, Tolkien died. And Hill arranged for that to be published. It often was published as a as a poster, was in Dutch actually first. And then uh it eventually made its way to other posters in the US and other places, but it became a picture book in 1990, copyright Joy Hill. When she died, she gave it to an Anglican order, so it never was part of the Tolkien estate, but part of Joy Hill's joy, I guess. So the picture book was illustrated by Pauline Baines, who is a not only a noted Tolkien illustrator, but just a noted illustrator. She has 26 paintings for the Hobbit. A few minutes ago I noted that the it was first Old Norse, that the form is Old Norse. So I don't know anything. I'm not a scholar. I have no idea if the uh version of the poem, which I'm about to read, is good by by poet standards. I don't know. But I suspect it was in the form of Old Norse and converted by Tolkien to be for Middle Earth. But it's Bilbo's words as he tackles the Grey Haven. Remember, he gets on the ship and heads to the Grey Haven. I find it um noteworthy because it touches me, but also it could be a poem about anyone who's dying, who has lived a long life and is ready. And I uh again, Tolkien wrote this uh quite a long time ago, and then it's not really clear when he adapted it to be Bilbo, but it sure feels like he was thinking about those things himself, and it's really poignant to me that he gave it away. Another challenge that I faced over this time out from the Tolkien podcast is that a friend of mine took his own life, and grief is rather sneaky. He and I weren't best friends, he's I certainly wasn't his closest friend, but I feel very much the loss of his voice, the silence from him, and I can't help but think about him. And I don't know when it's appropriate in a Tolkien podcast to pay tribute to your buddy, but I really want to in some way, and I figure if you made it the whole hour, you can turn off the podcast now. I'm just gonna read Bilbo's last song and think of my friend Brian. Day has ended. Dim my eyes, but journey long before me lies. Farewell, friends. I hear the call. The ship's beside the stony wall, foam is white and waves are grey. Beyond the sunset leads my way. Foam is salt, the wind is free. I hear the rising of the sea. Farewell, friends. The sails are set, the wind is east, the moorings fret, shadows long before me lie beneath the ever bending sky, but islands lie behind the sun that I shall raise ere all is done. Lands there are to west of west, where night is quiet and sleep is rest. Guided by the lonely star beyond the utmost harbor bar, I'll find the havens fair and free, and beaches of the starlit sea, ship my ship. I seek the west and fields and mountains ever blessed. Farewell, middle earth. At last I see the star above my mast. My name's Larry Curtis, and you've been listening to the Tolkien Podcast.