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Browsing the Compleat Middle-Earth Library - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

1. The Hobbit, 3rd edition (1965) (Douglas Anderson's Annotated Hobbit is recommended)
2. The Lord of the Rings, 2nd edition (1965) (the edited version with the Douglas Anderson "Note on the Text" is recommended)
3. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962) (now included in The Tolkien Reader, 1966)
4. The Silmarillion (1977) (edited/compiled by Christopher Tolkien -- there is a 2nd edition which contains no textual alterations or additions)
5. Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth (1980) (this is the first book with extensive commentary from Christopher)

Now, there are other books besides the History of Middle-earth books, and thorough Tolkien research occasionally requires dipping into those books. I'm speaking of The Road Goes Ever On (1967) and The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), the latter being edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Carpenter also wrote the authoritative J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977), and some people recommend that as well, although its usefulness really depends on what sort of research you are doing. In fact, if your goal is to study all the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, and not simply his Middle-earth-related books, there are many more books and essays to look for, such as Farmer Giles of Ham, which is sometimes published with Smith of Wootton Major, Mr. Bliss, Roverandom, et. al. Forodrim has a pretty thorough Tolkien bibliography, including Tolkien's own scholarly works. Tolkien research is not yet a fully developed science, but there are several recognizable sub-disciplines in the field. Academics are familiar with Tolkien literary criticism, which was launched almost immediately after the first publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1954-1955. Some Tolkien defenders continue to respond to critical works written in the 1950s even today. Linguists and Biblical scholars also study Tolkien's professional papers and translations in Anglo-Saxon and Biblical texts (he is credited for work done on The Jerusalem Bible (1945-55, 1956 -- the Book of Job represents Tolkien's largest contribution), although that does not appear in the Forodrim bibliography. And students of literary theory may be quite familiar with Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" essay (based on a lecture he delivered as part of the Andrew Lange series in 1938). But Middle-earth is the crown of Tolkien's writing achievements. He spent most of his life developing the mythology that we are loosely referring to by implication when we speak of Middle-earth. The History of Middle-earth strives to document most of J.R.R. Tolkien's work on that mythology, which in fact is a succession of mythologies, some of them quite unrelated to one another.

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