The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide

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The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide
The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide.jpg
Author Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond
LanguageEnglish
Subject J. R. R. Tolkien, Tolkien's legendarium
Genre Non-fiction
PublisherHarperCollins (UK), Houghton Mifflin (US)
Publication date
2006
Pages2300
ISBN 978-0-618-39113-4
OCLC 70803518

The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide is a 2006 reference book by the husband and wife team of Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. It provides a detailed chronology of Tolkien's life in volume 1, and a reader's guide in volume 2. The second edition in 2017 revised and extended the work, the reader's guide being divided into two volumes.

Contents

Book

First edition (2006)

The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (2006) by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, following their 2005 The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion is a two-volume work of reference on J. R. R. Tolkien and Tolkien studies. Volume 1 "Chronology" presents an extraordinarily detailed chronology of Tolkien's life on 800 pages. Volume 2 "Reader's Guide" has information on people, places, organisations, biographical topics, literary topics and writings by Tolkien. The preface states that it is not "a handbook of his invented lands and characters".

Revised and expanded edition (2017)

Volume 1 "Chronology" extends the chronology of Tolkien's life to 936 pages. Volume 2 is the "Reader's Guide", Part I, A-M, while Volume 3 is the "Reader's Guide", Part II, N-Z. The entire work occupies 2720 pages.

Reception

Of the first edition

David Oberhelman, writing in Mythlore , call the work "undoubtedly a seminal if not the definitive reference work on the Professor". He states that "in true Tolkien fashion, [it] grew in the telling". In his opinion, "the breadth of the coverage and the authority with which Scull and Hammond document Tolkien's life and times will make these books an invaluable supplement to Humphrey Carpenter's classic 1977 biography and their own 2005 The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion . Oberhelman notes that rather than studying the fictional Middle-earth, the work focuses on Tolkien himself, describing "people, places and things" linked to Tolkien. Where there is interpretation beyond what Tolkien or his son Christopher write, the work tends to cite scholars like Verlyn Flieger and Tom Shippey. Arguments are presented in a balanced way, and the discussions are "always informative as well as entertaining". Oberhelman calls the work "truly a monumental achievement". [1]

John Garth, in Tolkien Studies , describes Scull and Hammond's work as a "super-heavyweight contribution by two highly regarded veterans of Tolkien studies." In his view, while Michael D. C. Drout's The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia may have the edge on matters of criticism, Scull and Hammond is best on "biographical matters". The work's encyclopedic structure "rightly" avoids having entries on fictional people, places, and "totems", an approach that works like Robert Foster's The Complete Guide to Middle-earth had incautiously adopted. Instead, it "ambitiously" aims to cover the whole of Tolkien's life in diaristic detail, as The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien did for 1944, given that Tolkien had written repeatedly to his son Christopher in that year detailing small events in his life. The result is to offer the scholar and the interested reader a wealth of detail on why and how Tolkien wrote as he did. [2]

Of the second edition

Jason Fisher, also writing in Tolkien Studies, notes that early reviewers were correct to predict the "lasting value" of Scull and Hammond's work, calling it "an indispensible resource" alongside the pair's other books, especially "for matters of biography and bibliography." He explicitly endorses the praise of the work by both Oberhelman and Garth, stating that it is "still deserve[d]". He notes that many "defects and oversights" in the first edition have been fixed. These include the provision of running headwords (at the top of each page) and of a list of the topics covered by the work. He notes, too, that the work has been greatly expanded, incorporating years' worth of material on the authors' website. [3]

See also

Related Research Articles

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<i>The Return of the King</i> 1955 part of novel by J. R. R. Tolkien

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J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator is a collection of paintings and drawings by J. R. R. Tolkien for his stories, published posthumously in 1995. The book was edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. It won the 1996 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies. The nature and importance of Tolkien's artwork is discussed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mythopoeic Awards</span> Literary award

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the real-world history and notable fictional elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy universe. It covers materials created by Tolkien; the works on his unpublished manuscripts, by his son Christopher Tolkien; and films, games and other media created by other people.

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<i>The Tolkien Reader</i> 1966 anthology of works by J. R. R. Tolkien

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Wayne Gordon Hammond is an American scholar known for his research and writings on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.

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<i>The Lord of the Rings: A Readers Companion</i>

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<i>A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien</i> 2014 scholarly book edited by Stuart D. Lee

A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien is a 2014 book edited by Stuart D. Lee and published by Wiley-Blackwell. It is a part of the Blackwell Companions to Literature series, which have been described as prestigious reference works, and features authors well-known in the field of Tolkien studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tolkien's artwork</span> Artwork by J. R. R. Tolkien

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Michael Foster, known as Mike Foster, was an emeritus professor of English and a Tolkien scholar. In 1978 he pioneered the teaching of Tolkien studies at university level.

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J. R. R. Tolkien included many elements in his Middle-earth writings, especially The Lord of the Rings, other than narrative text. These include artwork, calligraphy, chronologies, family trees, heraldry, languages, maps, poetry, proverbs, scripts, glossaries, prologues, and annotations. Scholars have stated that the use of these elements places Tolkien in the tradition of English antiquarianism.

References