The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1

Åke Jönsson, later known as Åke Bertenstam, cast a wide net in compiling En Tolkienbibliografi 1911–1980 = A Tolkien Bibliography 1911–1980 (1983; rev. edn. 1986). Despite the terminal date indicated in the title, Bertenstam also lists works by Tolkien, reviews of Tolkien’s works, and reviews of books about Tolkien that were published later than 1980. Fan publications are included, and many more British and European works than are covered by West or Johnson. Alone among Tolkien bibliographers, Bertenstam provides an index by subject. Five supplements to his bibliography have appeared in the occasional Swedish Tolkien journal Arda, beginning with the number for 1982–83 (published 1986) and ending with that for 1988–91 (published 1994).

Bertenstam’s experience illustrates the difficulties involved in maintaining a comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Tolkien, given the continual growth in that field, the rapidity of its expansion, and the cost of print publication (his final supplement occupied more than 200 pages, fully half of the 1988–91 Arda). Computer technology and the Internet offers a means to produce a Tolkien bibliography that is less expensive and more easily updated (if sometimes ephemeral, as websites and web hosts come and go), though there remains always the difficulty of finding personnel, usually volunteers, able and willing to gather, analyze, and enter bibliographic data and write expert annotations. Michael D.C. Drout and students at Wheaton College, Massachusetts, for example, have contributed to an online database, wheatoncollege.edu/english/tolkien-bibliography, about which he has written: ‘The bibliography is copious but not exhaustive. It has been compiled by students, though checked by me, but sometimes what happens is that a very enthusiastic student takes on a big pile of articles to read and summarize, then things come up, and the articles never do get into the database. So there are many lacunae, particularly in some of the more recent work’ (‘Tolkien Bibliography Online’. Wormtalk and Slugspeak (blog), 15 March 2010).

Further information on early reviews of books by Tolkien, and on early articles and comments on Tolkien, may be found in a series of annotated bibliographies by George H. Thompson in Mythlore (Autumn 1984–Autumn 1987; errata, Autumn 1997). ‘An Inklings Bibliography’, a feature published in most issues of Mythlore between whole nos. 12 (June 1976) and 85 (Winter 1999), often included annotated citations to Tolkien *criticism, compiled by Joe R. Christopher and Wayne G. Hammond. Two checklists of dissertations concerned with Tolkien supplement West’s Tolkien Criticism: Richard E. Blackwelder, ‘Dissertations from Middle-earth’ in Beyond Bree, March 1990, and Daniel Timmons, ‘Tolkien-Related Dissertations and Theses in English’ in Tolkien Collector 16 (July 1997).

No comprehensive, widely available bibliography of articles, reviews, and other writings about Tolkien that have appeared in fanzines has yet been published. One of the foremost experts on the subject, Sumner Gary Hunnewell, has produced relevant checklists, notably his series Tolkien Fandom Review which (to date) covers the period from the beginning of Tolkien fandom through the late 1960s. Lists, by a variety of hands, of Tolkien-inspired items such as calendars, posters, recordings, games, and collectible figures are occasionally published in the fanzine Beyond Bree; some of these were collected in the List of Tolkienalia, ed. Nancy Martsch (1992).

See also *Criticism; *Fandom and popularity.

The Bidding of the Minstrel, from the Lay of Eärendel. Poem, the latest version of which was published with commentary in *The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (1984), pp. 269–71.

In this work a minstrel is encouraged to sing of ‘Eärendel the wandering’, ‘a tale of immortal sea-yearning / The Eldar once made ere the change of the light’. But the poet replies that ‘the music is broken, the words half-forgotten’. The song he can sing ‘is but shreds one remembers / Of golden imaginings fashioned in sleep’.

The Bidding of the Minstrel survives in several versions. On one of these Tolkien noted that he wrote the poem in his rooms in St John Street, *Oxford in winter 1914. To its earliest finished text he later hastily added the title (as it appears to *Christopher Tolkien) The Minstrel Renounces the Song; later this became Lay of Eärendel and finally The Bidding of the Minstrel, from the Lay of Eärendel. In its original form it ‘was much longer than it became’ (Christopher Tolkien, The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, p. 270): in early 1915 Tolkien divided its first part, The Bidding of the Minstrel, from its second, which he entitled The Mermaid’s Flute (see Chronology, entry for 17–18 March 1915 and later). He made slight revisions to The Bidding of the Minstrel in the period c. 1920–4.

The work is one of several early poems by Tolkien concerning the mariner Eärendel (variously spelled), who would figure prominently in *‘The Silmarillion’ (see *‘Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath’). Here Eärendel wanders earthly seas, a figure of ancient lore whose tales are bound up with those of the Elves (earlier ‘fairies’). On the back of one of the earliest workings of the poem is an outline of a great voyage by Eärendel to all points of the compass on earth, but also to ‘a golden city’ later identified as the Elvish city Kôr, before setting sail in the sky: see The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, pp. 261–2.

Bilbo’s Last Song (at the Grey Havens). Poem, first published in English by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, as a poster in April 1974 (a Dutch translation appeared at the end of 1973), and by George Allen & Unwin, London, in September 1974. See further, Descriptive Bibliography A11. For later editions, see below.

In this work the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, now near the end of his life (‘Day is ended, dim my eyes’), bids farewell to his friends and to Middle-earth as he takes ship at the Grey Havens (at the end of *The Lord of the Rings) and sails ‘west of West’ to ‘fields and mountains ever blest’. The content and mood of the poem call to mind ‘Crossing the Bar’ (1889) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. It was not, however, Tolkien’s own farewell to Middle-earth, as some have interpreted it, nor is it wholly a later work. Bilbo’s Last Song is a revision of a much earlier poem, Vestr um haf (Old Norse ‘west over sea’), from the 1920s or 1930s. In this there is no connection with Bilbo Baggins or Middle-earth; and it could not have become Bilbo’s Last Song until after Tolkien had conceived of the end of The Lord of the Rings, no later than November 1944 (see Letters, p. 104, letter to Christopher Tolkien, 29 November 1944: ‘But the final scene will be the passage of Bilbo and Elrond and Galadriel through the woods of the Shire on their way to the Grey Havens. Frodo will join them and pass over the Sea …’). But the poem was in its final form by October 1968, when Tolkien’s occasional assistant, *Joy Hill, discovered it while helping him arrange his books after he had moved from *Oxford to *Poole. On 3 September 1970 he presented the poem, with its copyright, to Joy Hill as a token of gratitude for years of friendship and service.

In the original Houghton Mifflin issue Bilbo’s Last Song was accompanied by a gauzy photograph of a river, for mood rather than as a depiction of the poem’s events. George Allen & Unwin, London, published the poem in September 1974, also in poster form but with an illustration by *Pauline Baynes of Sam, Merry, and Pippin watching the Last Ship sail into the West. In 1990 Bilbo’s Last Song was published in book form, accompanied by three series of illustrations by Pauline Baynes: one which tells the story of Bilbo’s last days at Rivendell, his procession to the Grey Havens, and his departure for the Undying Lands; another which depicts Bilbo remembering his past adventures; and a third which tells the story of *The Hobbit. The second of these was omitted in a new edition of Bilbo’s Last Song published in 2002.

As a poster, Bilbo’s Last Song was too slight to attract reviews, while the book version received (favourable) notice mainly for its illustrations.

Although it is not strictly part of The Lord of the Rings, the poem was smoothly incorporated into the 1981 BBC radio production of that work (*Adaptations) by Brian Sibley and Michael Bakewell. It has also been set to music (see *The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle) and recorded by *Donald Swann.

Biographies. Tolkien held qualified views on biography and its uses, in particular when he was to be the subject. On 24 June 1957 he wrote in response to a request from Caroline Everett, author of an M.A. thesis on his fiction: ‘I do not feel inclined to go into biographical detail. I doubt its relevance to criticism. Certainly in any form less than a complete biography, interior and exterior, which I alone could write, and which I do not intend to write’ (Letters, p. 257) – a biography, that is, which not only recorded ‘exterior’ facts such as those found in Who’s Who, but also examined how (or whether) Tolkien’s experiences had influenced his writings. Produced by anyone other than the subject himself, such a biography in its ‘interior’ aspects could be no more than speculation (notwithstanding critics who have argued that an author is the last person to understand what he writes). Elsewhere Tolkien wrote that ‘only one’s guardian Angel, or indeed God Himself, could unravel the real relationship between personal facts and an author’s works’ (letter to Deborah Webster, 25 October 1958, Letters, p. 288).

Even so, Tolkien was aware that many readers of *The Lord of the Rings were interested to know more about him, and was concerned that if facts about his life were to be reported, they should be reported accurately. In 1955 he provided information about his life and work to the columnist Harvey Breit of the New York Times Book Review, but felt that the result (‘Oxford Calling’, 5 June 1955, quoted in Letters, pp. 217–18) did not make sense. ‘Please do not blame me for what Breit made of my letter!’ he wrote to his American publisher, the Houghton Mifflin Company (*Publishers). ‘I was asked a series of questions, with a request to answer briefly, brightly, and quotably’, and he had done so (30 June 1955, Letters, p. 218).

When the critic Gilbert Highet likewise asked for biographical material, Houghton Mifflin forwarded the request and apparently made it known that a text was needed also for their own publicity purposes. In response, Tolkien prepared a formal statement which was part biography and part comment on issues related to The Lord of the Rings, asking forgiveness if Houghton Mifflin should find it ‘obscure, wordy, and self-regarding and neither “bright, brief, nor quotable”’. The statement, contained within a letter, was printed in Letters, pp. 218–21, incorporating annotations and corrections by Tolkien made to a typescript copy. A portion was quoted earlier in the article *Tolkien on Tolkien in the Diplomat for October 1966, together with three paragraphs from a letter Tolkien had written in 1963 to Mrs Nancy Smith (provided to the magazine by the recipient), but with errors.

Accounts of Tolkien’s life often have been marked by errors, by misinterpretations of facts, even by outright invention. On 16 January 1961, the translator Åke Ohlmarks having included biographical information in a preface to the Swedish Lord of the Rings (Sagan om ringen, 1959–61; see also *Translations), Tolkien objected that he did ‘not wish to have any biographical or critical material on myself inserted by the translator without my permission and without any consultation. The five pages of impertinent nonsense inserted by Mr Ohlmarks … could well have been spared’ (letter to Alina Dadlez, foreign rights coordinator at George Allen & Unwin, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). On 24 January 1961 he wrote again:

I do not object to biographical notice, if it is desirable (the Dutch [translation of The Lord of the Rings] did without it). But it should be correct, and it should be pertinent. …

Who is Who is not a safe source in the hands of foreigners ignorant of England. From it Ohlmarks has woven a ridiculous fantasy. Ohlmarks is a very vain man … preferring his own fancy to facts, and very ready to pretend to knowledge which he does not possess. He does not hesitate to attribute to me sentiments and beliefs which I repudiate. Amongst them a dislike of the University of Leeds, because it was ‘northern’ and no older than the Victorian seventies. This is impertinent and entirely untrue. [letter to Alina Dadlez, Letters, p. 305]

Ohlmarks had also made numerous factual mistakes, such as that the Tolkien–Gordon edition of *Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925) was first published in 1934.

On 23 February 1966 Tolkien wrote to *W.H. Auden, who planned to write a book about him, that he regarded ‘such things as premature impertinences; and unless undertaken by an intimate friend, or with consultation of the subject (for which at present I have no time), I cannot believe that they have a usefulness to justify the distaste and irritation given to the victim. I wish at any rate that any book could wait until I produce the Silmarillion’ (Letters, p. 367). Indeed, not until *The Silmarillion was published in 1977 could one begin to appreciate Tolkien’s life’s-work, while today the biographer of Tolkien overlooks at his peril the long circuitous development of the mythology documented in *The History of Middle-earth (1983–96), as well as other works published still later.

EARLY BIOGRAPHIES

And yet Tolkien did not veto a book about him published in 1968 by William Ready, the former Director of Libraries at Marquette University (*Libraries and archives) to which Tolkien had sold some of his literary papers. The Tolkien Relation: A Personal Enquiry by William Ready (reprinted as Understanding Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings) is ‘personal’ in the double sense that it is one man’s view of his subject, and an enquiry into Tolkien’s life and character relative to his fiction, primarily The Lord of the Rings. Ready evidently hoped to play on his subject’s past acquaintance to gain his support and approval; and it may be that a sense of gratitude, for the interest Ready had shown in his work while at Marquette, prevented Tolkien from replying as forcefully has he had to W.H. Auden. Nevertheless he declined to supply personal information to Ready, once again citing a dislike of ‘being written about’, the results of which to that date ‘have caused me both irritation and distaste.’ And he hoped that Ready would make his treatment ‘literary (and as critical of that aspect as you like)’ rather than personal (letter to Ready, 2 February 1967, quoted in The Tolkien Relation, pp. 55–6).

Having seen Ready’s book in print, Tolkien wrote to Clyde S. Kilby:

Though ill-written it is not entirely without value, since the man is intelligent. But he is a rogue. … Ready paid me a short visit [in April 1967]. … A large part of the time he was with me he was talking about himself. I can now see his difficulty. If he had brought out a notebook and informed me of his object, I should have shown him out. He therefore had to rely on his own memory of the few remarks I made about my personal history. These he appears to have embroidered with wholly illegitimate deductions of his own and the addition of baseless fictions. [4 June 1968, Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois]

Among these, Ready says that Tolkien’s mother, Mabel Suffield (*Mabel Tolkien), before her marriage had ‘worked with her sisters as a missionary among the women of the Sultan of Zanzibar’ (The Tolkien Relation, p. 6); that she died in 1910, not 1904; that Tolkien gave the W.P. Ker Lecture in 1933 (in fact it was in 1953); and that one of the *Oxford pubs in which the *Inklings met was the ‘Burning Babe’, presumably a mishearing of ‘Bird and Baby’, a nickname of the Eagle and Child. Mabel’s service in Zanzibar, a story wholly without foundation, in particular has cast a long shadow over later biographies and biographical sketches.

The first full biography of Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth by Daniel Grotta (or Grotta-Kurska), was published in 1976, three years after its subject’s death. To its credit, far more than may be said for most later accounts, it is the product of appreciable research, in libraries and through personal contacts. Grotta was denied access to Tolkien’s private papers, however, and according to his author’s note (p. 160) the Tolkien family ‘requested Tolkien’s close friends and associates to refrain from giving me information, out of respect for Tolkien’s memory’. By that time Humphrey Carpenter had been commissioned to write the biography described below, to which the Tolkien Estate gave preference. Grotta was also refused permission to publish some of the material he was able to glean nevertheless: there are omissions in his 1976 text, each with the label ‘deleted for legal considerations’. Under these circumstances he learned nothing of the *T.C.B.S., and concluded that Tolkien was referring to his fellow Oxford student *Allen Barnett (rather than *Christopher Wiseman) when he said that all but one of his close friends had been killed in the First World War. And since Grotta produced his biography too early to have read The Silmarillion (published in 1977), he could say little of substance about that seminal work, and with no knowledge of its manuscripts he wrote a confused description of its history.

Omissions such as these limit the usefulness of Grotta’s book, while its reliability is called into question by many careless errors, only a few of which need be mentioned. He mistakenly names as ‘Tolkien’s first tutor … a young Fellow named Joseph Wrighty, who had arrived at Oxford in the same year as Tolkien’ (p. 38; the eminent *Joseph Wright had been at Oxford since 1888 and a professor since 1901). Grotta notes that Tolkien took a Second in ‘Moderns (which included Anglo-Saxon, as opposed to Greek and Latin)’ (p. 39), rather than Honour Moderations, an examination for those reading Classics. He names *Nevill Coghill rather than *Norman Davis as Tolkien’s successor as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature (Coghill became the Merton Professor of English Literature in 1957, before Tolkien retired). And he describes the Ace Books edition of The Lord of the Rings as having ‘neither index nor appendices’ (p. 126), though it does include the latter.

In the second edition of his book, retitled The Biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, Architect of Middle-earth (1978), Grotta made a few minor alterations, having ‘received much additional information from readers’ (p. 175; Carpenter’s Biography had appeared the previous year), but the greater number of errors from the previous text remained. One of these, in which Tolkien is said to have written a work called Númenor in the 1920s which preceded *‘The Silmarillion’ (the reverse of the actual sequence), is even compounded in Grotta’s second edition, in a new ‘epilogue’ on The Silmarillion then recently published. The 1992 reprint of his book contains a new preface, but is otherwise unchanged.

One review of the first edition of our Companion and Guide criticized us for not making more reference to Grotta, specifically to his use of the papers of Allen Barnett, which were seen as providing a window into Tolkien’s experiences at Exeter College (*Oxford). But Grotta’s reliability is so frequently called into question that it did not seem safe to trust his transcriptions any more than his facts, without verification. In this regard we could mention one passage almost certainly misattributed by Grotta to Tolkien, an off-colour joke said to survive in a typewritten letter sent to Allen Barnett and used to illustrate Tolkien’s ‘schoolboy wit’ as an Oxford undergraduate (pp. 37–8 first edition; pp. 42–3 later editions). In content and style, it is unlike any demonstrably early correspondence by Tolkien we have read, and includes distinctly American usages. Variants of this text in fact appear to have been in common circulation, perhaps since the late nineteenth century.

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter (in the United States, originally Tolkien: A Biography), first published in 1977, is much to be preferred to Grotta. Publisher *Rayner Unwin recalled that he

had long worried that without an authorised biography there would inevitably be ill-informed and tendentious writings about Tolkien over which neither he nor we [his publishers] would have any control. In his lifetime Tolkien had brushed aside the fear, and for him it would indeed have been yet another distraction. But after his death it was one of the first matters that I raised with the [Tolkien] family. They accepted the need for something to be done, but were doubtful about who could be entrusted with such a commission and what control there might be over what was written. As a stop-gap solution I suggested a pictorial biography, using family pictures for the most part, with extended captions as the text. … *Priscilla [Tolkien], who lived in Oxford, knew a young man that she thought might be suitable. He worked for Radio Oxford, and I agreed to meet him. Humphrey Carpenter … was personable, eager, and willing to throw up his job on the radio to undertake our project. I didn’t think a mixture of photographs and extended captions needed any great qualifications so I agreed terms on the spot and encouraged him to get down to work. The material he needed for his research was stored in the converted barn next to the house that *Christopher [Tolkien] was then living in outside Oxford, and Humphrey found himself working closely alongside Christopher.

It soon became apparent that Humphrey had dug himself so enthusiastically into the project that a full-scale biography was in the making. Christopher seemed agreeable, and so was I. [George Allen & Unwin: A Remembrancer (1999), pp. 248–9]

To date, only Carpenter among Tolkien’s biographers has had full access to his subject’s private papers. In addition, he was able to interview members of Tolkien’s family and many friends and colleagues, and he had a good personal knowledge of Oxford and understanding of university life. Although ‘authorized’ by the Tolkien family, his book is by no means hagiography: it does not omit mention, for instance, of the younger Tolkien’s occasional bouts of despair, or of tensions within his marriage. And having been vetted by Christopher Tolkien, it contains very few errors or misinterpretations. (We note occasional disagreements with Carpenter in Chronology, and in the Reader’s Guide under *Reading.) Comparatively short by later standards, only (in its first edition) 260 pages excluding appendices and index, the Biography serves its purpose well without verbosity. In later editions its checklist of Tolkien’s published writings was expanded to include further posthumous works, but as of this writing it is many years out of date.

Carpenter’s own, not always favourable views about his biography of Tolkien may be found in ‘Learning about Ourselves: Biography as Autobiography’, a conversation with Lyndall Gordon, in The Art of Literary Biography, ed. John Batchelor (1995), and probably in one paragraph – the subject may be reasonably inferred – of his ‘Lives Lived between the Lines’ in the Times Saturday Review (London), 27 February 1993.

The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends (1978), also by Humphrey Carpenter, is a useful adjunct to Biography though its concentration is on Lewis as the centre of the group of friends.

LATER BIOGRAPHIES

Although Tolkien: Man and Myth by Joseph Pearce (1998) often has been called a biography, it more narrowly explores the significance of Middle-earth and what it represented in Tolkien’s thought, and the connection between his religious faith and his life and writings – ‘internal’ biography more so than ‘external’. About a third of its text consists of long quotations by Tolkien himself and from writings about him, while several chapters are little more than a summary of Carpenter’s Biography.

Tolkien: A Biography by Michael White (2001) is largely a retelling of the standard life by Carpenter. In order to provide ‘a more colourful image of the creator of Middle-earth’ (p. 6), White adopted a ‘breezy’ prose style and, to impart a sense of immediacy, often assumes knowledge of thoughts and feelings. The tone of his book is set at once, as he imagines Tolkien returning home on ‘a warm early summer afternoon’, kissing his wife, and greeting ‘his baby daughter, five-month-old Priscilla’ (pp. 7–8) – even though Priscilla Tolkien was born on 18 June 1929, and could not have been five months old in ‘early summer’. In the same chapter White reports a ‘legend’ not substantiated anywhere else, that Tolkien was inspired to write the first line of *The Hobbit when he noticed a hole in his study carpet. Such inventions or suppositions are frequent in White’s book, together with many errors of fact.

The chief focus of Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth by John Garth (2003; emended in the 2nd printing) is narrow, roughly from the end of Tolkien’s days at *King Edward’s School, *Birmingham to his demobilization from the Army. But Garth examines those formative years (1911–19) more fully than Carpenter was able to do, due to the opening some years later of pertinent First World War papers in the National Archives (Public Record Office). Garth also made a more extensive use of correspondence by Tolkien’s friends, to relate Tolkien’s military experiences and comradeship in the T.C.B.S. to his early poems (in so far as these had been published) and the beginnings of his mythology and invented languages. His study arose, he said, from his observation that Tolkien ‘embarked upon his monumental [‘Silmarillion’] mythology in the midst of the First World War, the crisis of disenchantment that shaped the modern era’; and one of his aims was ‘to place Tolkien’s creative activities in the context of the international conflict, and the cultural upheavals which accompanied it’ (p. xiii). A ‘Postscript’ or summation follows the biography proper.

Garth has continued to expand upon his 2003 book in later, shorter publications, including ‘Tolkien, Exeter College and the Great War’, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration, ed. Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger (2008); ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and the Boy Who Didn’t Believe in Fairies’ (on the Gilson family), Tolkien Studies 7 (2010); ‘Robert Quilter Gilson, T.C.B.S.: A Brief Life in Letters’, Tolkien Studies 8 (2011); and Tolkien at Exeter College (2014; emended in the 4th printing).

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Leslie Ellen Jones (2003) is aimed specifically at an American schools audience. For the sake of the student reader, she frequently interrupts her narrative of Tolkien’s life to explain about late nineteenth-century British society, English as a Germanic language, the causes of the First World War, and the like; and she often comments on matters of current social concern, such as class distinctions and the role of women. She devotes two chapters of her book to a discussion of The Lord of the Rings.

Since 1992 Colin Duriez has written several books on Tolkien or the Inklings which are at least partly biographical. These tend to be repetitive and lightweight in content. The most substantive is J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend (2012), though considerably shorter than Carpenter’s biography. Duriez himself admits that his book does not supplant Carpenter’s, which is ‘still indispensible, even now that so many more of Tolkien’s writings are available, not least because of his access to private documents and his ability to make sense of a universe of unfinished writings, diaries in code, and contradictory opinions’. Duriez’s book ‘is not intended for scholars but for ordinary readers wishing to explore the life of Tolkien and how it relates to his stories of Middle-earth’ (p. 9).

One of the most important biographies since Carpenter’s is Tolkien by Raymond Edwards (2014). Although Edwards depends a great deal on Carpenter, his book is not a mere update of Biography but incorporates more recent research and offers fresh insights. After a comparatiely weak account of Tolkien’s early years, once he reaches the point when Tolkien began to work seriously on *The Book of Lost Tales and associated poems, Edwards grasps the opportunity offered by The History of Middle-earth and the linguistic journal Parma Eldalamberon to follow the development of Tolkien’s legendarium and associated languages. He is particularly illuminating in his treatment of Tolkien’s academic career, and devotes considerable space to topics such as Philology and the *Oxford English School. He shows far more understanding than some other recent commentators of the demands Tolkien’s academic duties made on his time. In the main text, he says only what is necessary about religion in Tolkien’s life, instead devoting an appendix to Tolkien’s practice of his Catholic faith and the presence of Catholicism in his writings (*Religion).

Tolkien’s religion is more of a concern in The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (2015) by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, a work which also aims to be a joint biography of Tolkien, *C.S. Lewis, *Charles Williams, and *Owen Barfield. These men, the Zaleskis write, ‘make a perfect compass rose of faith: Tolkien the Catholic, Lewis the “mere Christian,” Williams the Anglican (and magus), Barfield the esotericist’ (p. 12); but the attempt to weave the four lives together is awkward. The Zaleskis admire Lewis as a Christian who learned the errors of his ways when he left the faith, then returned to be its champion, and as a writer and scholar who produced a substantial body of published work. Tolkien, however, is charged with ‘crimes of omission’, with ‘a long trail of starts, stumbles, and stops that typified his dilatoriness in academic labors’, which the Zaleskis attribute to his heart being instead ‘in the development of the legendarium and its offspring’ (p. 214) – though they note the importance of works such as *Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Among other works with biographical content, Diana Pavlac Glyer in The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (2007) has a worthwhile discussion of the importance of the Inklings to Tolkien (her Bandersnatch (2015) is an adaptation of the same work for a wider audience). Andrew H. Morton has produced two studies (the first in association with John Hayes) centred on Tolkien’s Aunt *Jane Neave: Tolkien’s Gedling 1914: The Birth of a Legend (2008) and Tolkien’s Bag End: Threshold to Adventure (2009). Phil Mathison has filled in some details about Tolkien’s life during the First World War in Tolkien in East Yorkshire 1917–1918 (2012). And Arne Zettersten in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Double Worlds and Creative Process: Language and Life by Arne Zettersten (2011, previously published in Swedish in 2008) recalls his meetings and conversations with Tolkien in the latter’s final years (although Zettersten refers to correspondence, no quotations are given) and usefully discusses Tolkien’s academic work on the ‘AB language’ (*Ancrene Riwle).

OTHER BIOGRAPHICAL TREATMENTS

We must also mention three biographical sources associated with the Tolkien centenary in 1992. The Tolkien Family Album by *John and Priscilla Tolkien follows more or less the lines that Rayner Unwin had suggested: ‘a pictorial biography, using family pictures for the most part, with extended captions as the text’. It is interesting especially as a brief reminiscence of two of Tolkien’s children, and for its collection of photographs not reproduced elsewhere. Second, the Bodleian Library’s (*Libraries and archives) exhibition catalogue J.R.R. Tolkien: Life and Legend, written by Judith Priestman, describes and reproduces letters, illustrations, and drawings by Tolkien, pages from his academic and literary manuscripts, and photographs of relevant people and places. These are placed in the context of Tolkien’s life, ‘to indicate something of the scope and variety of [his] achievements’ (p. 7). Finally, also issued in 1992 was the film J.R.R.T.: A Portrait of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 1892–1973, with a script by Helen Dickinson, produced for the Tolkien Partnership by Landseer Film & Television Productions.

There is also useful biographical content in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (2006), and in books concerned more generally with the Inklings.