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

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СКАЧАТЬ (‘fanzines’). Entries considered by West to be of special note are marked with an asterisk. A second edition of Tolkien Criticism, published in 1981, is much enlarged but also more selective, to keep its length within bounds, the literature about Tolkien having expanded greatly the previous decade. Essays and reviews from three leading American fanzines (Mythlore, Orcrist, and the Tolkien Journal) were now cited. All entries in West’s second edition are to be considered ‘definitely of real importance’ to Tolkien studies ‘through the greater part of 1980, while what is excluded is much of what I consider peripheral’ (p. xi).

      For Modern Fiction Studies 50, no. 4 (Winter 2004) West produced ‘A Tolkien Checklist: Selected Criticism 1981–2004’, giving his subjective choices for ‘some of the best critical studies’ of Tolkien (p. 1015). Michael D.C. Drout and Hilary Wynne include an extensive bibliography, without annotations, in ‘Tom Shippey’s J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and a Look Back at Tolkien Criticism since 1982’, Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature 9, no. 1 (Fall 2000). This has been continued in the journal Tolkien Studies, by David Bratman and other hands.

      J.R.R. Tolkien: Six Decades of Criticism by Judith A. Johnson (1986) is more expansive than West’s bibliography in its coverage of fan as well as mainstream publications (through 1984), and in its annotations provides a welcome alternative point of view to West, but is otherwise less helpful as a guide to scholarship. Valuable writings about Tolkien are listed in the dubious company of Tolkien-inspired blank books and other ‘Tolkieniana’. And whereas West’s second edition is divided simply into two sections, Tolkien’s own writings arranged chronologically, and critical works about Tolkien listed alphabetically by author or (when no author is given) by title, the entries in Johnson are organized in a difficult scheme of multiple chronological and alphabetical divisions and subdivisions. Johnson’s book, moreover, suffers from errors and inconsistencies.

      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’), СКАЧАТЬ