Middle-Earth and Its Master

A Guide to Middle Earth, and The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth, by Robert Foster.

“A Guide to Middle-Earth was one of the first books I ever ordered through the mail. I remember it came in a padded paper sleeve. I carried it around with me through middle school; it still has small depressions in the cover from where my binder pressed into it. The first hobbits I ever drew were based on the Tim Kirk picture on the front, so all my hobbits for a while were views of their backs. This was the book that let me explain what the word dwimmerlaik meant to my drama teacher Mr. Fleming, who was reading the LOTR at the same time as I was. The Complete Guide came out after the publication of The Silmarillion.” – Power of Babel. The “Guide” is a Ballantine Book with a cover by Tim Kirk, and I drew that from-the-back hobbit several times. The “Complete Guide” is a Del Rey book with a Hildebrandt cover of The Fellowship.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy. Reference. Paperback.

Tolkien: A Look Behind “The Lord of the Rings”, by Lin Carter. (2 copies)

“Lin Carter's Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings, takes a broad view of the subject. He dedicates one chapter to Tolkien's biography, compounded from reliable sources and interviews, and spends the rest of the book summarizing Tolkien's work and looking at its antecedents and place in a long history of Fantasy writing, including a look at the LOTR's influence on writers that had come after it. Carter's main thesis is to show that, as epoch making as LOTR was, it did not just fall out of the sky fully formed but is part of an ancient and developing tradition.” – Power of Babel. Again, John had the older Ballantine Fantasy edition, I had the one with a cover by Curtis Woodbridge and wrote my name in it.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy History. Paperbacks.

A Tolkien Compass, Edited by Jared Lobdell.

A cover by Darrell K. Sweet. Essays about Tolkien and Middle-Earth, which includes Tolkien’s own “Guide to the Names in ‘The Lord of the Rings’”, a section that is left out (for legal reasons) in later editions. So all the more precious for that.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: ‘Fantasy Nonfiction’. Paperback.

Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter.

“This is the same book I bought back in 1978, and is one of the few books out of my thousands that I actually scrawled my name in, back before I developed a reluctance to mark up any volume. To put it into some historical perspective, it was just a few years since JRRT had passed away, and The Silmarillion (1977) had been published not too distantly. The Rankin/Bass Hobbit (1977) and the Bakshi LOTR (1978) were hanging in the air, and all and all it was a sort of Tolkien Renaissance --if a somewhat cheesy, 1970's sort of incarnation. My own personal interest, though strong, was still in its infancy, and I was eager to have this authorized, in-depth look at this enigmatic man's life … the idiosyncrasies of the paper, binding, and print evoke the time for me, and I am filled with nostalgia. Even the cover has the familiar, ubiquitous Ballantine Books portrait photo: the grinning, pipe-clutching Tolkien in a hugely-collared coat.” – Power of Babel.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Biography. Paperback.

Master of Middle-Earth, by Paul H. Kocher

“Way back in the day (about 1978, I think) I got a paperback copy of Paul H. Kocher's Master of Middle-Earth: The Fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien from the very first book store that ever opened in our little town. It had the picture of Bilbo at Rivendell from the 1976 Tolkien Calendar by the Brothers Hildebrandt on the cover. It was certainly one of the best and most scholarly books on the work of Tolkien generally available at the time and remains today a highly respected and frequently cited work on the legendarium. Besides being a balanced and insightful look at The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it provided tantalizing glimpses of more obscurely published works such as "Imram" and "The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun". - Power of Babel.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fantasy/Nonfiction. Paperback.

J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” a Fotonovel of the Ralph Bakshi movie.

The closest thing you could get to a copy of a film before the mass onset of the VCR, every page a frame from the movie with speech typed into it. I remember I got this copy at Mayfield’s, when John was working there. That’s where we bought our copies of Savage Sword of Conan and Famous Monsters and Fantastic Films. Ah, Youth …

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Fotonovel. Movie. Paperback.