Customer Reviews

The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Vol. 2: Reader's Guide

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Reader's Guide is one of the most impressive books about Tolkien and Tolkien's creation ever made. Actually, it is a vast encyclopedia, but instead of Frodo, Feanor or the Valar you can find in this book all of Tolkien and more important: Tolkien's sources. in this hefty volume (more than 1100 pages!) you can find extensive entries about interesting people in Tolkien's life like George Mcdonald, C.S Lewis and Barfield and interesting entries about themes and ideas in Tolkien creation like woman, light, time and more. Also you can find entries on the various sources that influenced Tolkien.
The main attraction is that you can find there entry about each chapter from the Silmarillion (the one that was published in 1977) with summary and complete analysis and references to the texts that Christopher used in order to build the chapters.

Scull and Hammond surely invested tremendous work in this volumes, the Bibliographical list is very impressive. Every entry is very detailed and although (As H&S wrote themselves in the foreword) you can't find there the whole information about some subjects, you can find in each entry enough to make you understand the basics. This book will not replace Shippey or even Carpenter, the Reader's Guide is something on a very different level: more like encyclopedia and less interpretation book.

This book is useful to everyone that wants to know more about Tolkien and Tolkien's creation. I think that this is tremendous achievement and great contribution to Tolkien study. If you read part or all of H.O.M.E and If you are making you own research - You should use this book, it will upgrade your research in a ways that you never dream that was possible.