The Fireside

Today is a very special day. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien turns 80 years old. As monumental as The Lord of the Rings  was for fantasy; those volumes wouldn't have existed if it weren't for The Hobbit . The Lord of the Rings  initially began as a sequel to The Hobbit , but the tale grew in the telling, as Tolkien often said. The Hobbit  somewhat did, as well. It is slightly long - for a children's book. The Hobbit  wasn't planned, or initially part, to be joined with Tolkien's mythology he was devoted most of his life to. It was in The Hobbit  that he dropped hints, breadcrumbs, and planted seeds. These would grow and flourish in The Lord of the Rings  (if you read them back-to-back, you'll see). It was intended to be fire-side reads for his children, as well some other fare, most of which can be found in Tales From the Perilous Realm . Not only did Tolkien write one of the best stories ever, he also gave it life. Tolkien provided artwork, runes, an...

A set I've been interested in for a while, but was crazy expensive on the markets due to it out of print, is Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull's two-volume Tolkien Companion and Guide . However, it is being revised and set to be re-published next year. Here's the official word from Wayne G.Hammond and Christina Scull.... We were honoured to learn this past spring that HarperCollins want to continue to publish the Companion and Guide, not simply as a reprint of the existing text but in a new edition, corrected, revised, and enlarged. When we were commissioned to write a general book about Tolkien’s life and works, our first model was C.S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide by Walter Hooper, a thick volume of nearly a thousand pages; but we gathered so much material that our Chronology alone reached that length. Fortunately, HarperCollins agreed to give us two volumes, though we had to cut the text of the Reader’s Guide to fit the maximum number of pages the binding pr...

Cover art has been revealed for the upcoming re-publication of the new Tolkien book, The Lay of Aortrou and Itroun , which completes the information on the book. It is a 503-line poem written by Tolkien in 1930, and published in The Welsh Review in 1945. Nov. 3, 2016 will see it re-published as its own book. Here are the official details: Coming from the darker side of J.R.R. Tolkien's imagination, "The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun" is an important non Middle-earth work to set alongside his other retellings of existing myth and legend, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Fall of Arthur and The Story of Kullervo. Together with Tolkien’s “Corrigan Poems”, which are included in this book, the Aotrou and Itroun texts comprise a sequence that was the outcome of a comparatively short but intense period in Tolkien's life when he was deeply engaged with Celtic languages and mythologies. The sequence shows the corrigan’s increasingly powerful presence, as she takes a...

My ‘shelf exam’ is nearly at an end! This week, I’ll be looking at Beowulf . This is Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf . It’s in prose, as opposed to verse – though he partially worked on a verse translation. By that fact, many Beowulf scholars may not like this edition because of the fact it’s not in verse. This publication is more substantial and ‘complete’ than The Fall of Arthur was, and feels similar to Sigurd & Gudrun . The book features the complete prose translation, as well as other goodies, which showcase Tolkien’s love and knowledge on Beowulf . Also, because it’s a translation, it’s interesting to see how Tolkien saw or interpreted certain portions. The best example I can think of is at the very beginning: “hwaet!” is “lo!” to him. So, let’s get into this book….. The dustjacket features a dragon design by Tolkien, and is quite lovely and striking and definitely looks like a Tolkien book. It feels like one too, as it uses the matte, paper-y texture commo...

Anyone waiting on a paperback edition of The Story of Kullervo, I’ve got great news for you! August 24, 2017 will see the paperback edition published. I’ve checked the dimensions of the book, and it will ‘match’ most of the other Tolkien books in paperback in terms of size. If you own Sigurd & Gudrun in paperback, for instance, it will be of very similar size and of the same height. The ISBN for the paperback by Harper Collins is:   9780008131388 . “ The world first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father. Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien's characters. 'Hapless Kullervo', as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny. Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed hi...