This short (229 pages plus bibliography and index) but highly important work will become an absolute necessity for all Tolkien admirers.
There are three sections. The first deals with Tolkien's brief but productive period working on the Oxford English Dictionary. The authors, who are all Editors of the OED, were able to examine the actual scraps of paper on which Tolkien wrote drafts for definitions and etymologies of words (primarily beginning with W) to be included in the OED. To an outsider such work could seem tedious in the extreme, but since the authors are as fascinated by the origins and developments of words as Tolkien was himself, they help us see how intriguing such work can be. (Indeed, Tolkien was so enthusiastic that many of his definitions had to be severely edited by the then Editor, who thus gained time and space at the expense of some great scholarship.)
The second section, on Tolkien as wordwright, I found particularly interesting. Having been an enthusiastic student of Middle earth since the age of 12 in 1969, I am very familiar with Tolkien's enormous vocabulary and love of words, and this section brings new light to Tolkien's deep knowledge of Anglo-Saxon and other ancient tongues, and to his readings of such authors as William Morris and H.R. Haggard, among many others. Here the reader recognizes anew that Tolkien's chosen career of philology was not just his job, but also his passion.
The third section is devoted to word studies and gives short histories of some of the terms, like Middle earth, Hobbit, mathom, etc, which Tolkien used throughout his writings. These are sometimes archaic terms like nuncheon and sometimes words developed by Tolkien himself such as eucatastrophe and legendarium, which have now entered the English language.
This is a scholarly but highly accessible work which will be appreciated by Tolkien scholars and anyone else who loves the English language.
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Denis Bridoux
A great work of scholarship
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