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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      SHORTER BIOGRAPHIES

      An ever-increasing number of shorter, illustrated biographies of Tolkien have also appeared, intended for younger (or more casual adult) readers. These include J.R.R. Tolkien: Man of Fantasy by Russell Shorto (1988); J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of Fantasy by David R. Collins (1992), made over in 2005 as J.R.R. Tolkien, significantly shortened and simplified, cluttered with inane sidebars (‘It’s a Fact!’), and injected with references to the Peter Jackson films of The Lord of the Rings (*Adaptations); Myth Maker: J.R.R. Tolkien by Anne E. Neimark (1996); J.R.R. Tolkien: The Man Who Created The Lord of the Rings by Michael Coren (2001); J.R.R. Tolkien: Creator of Languages and Legends by Doris Lynch (2003); J.R.R. Tolkien by Neil Heims (2004); The Importance of J.R.R. Tolkien by Stuart P. Levine (2004); J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of Imaginary Worlds by Edward Willett (2004); J.R.R. Tolkien by Vic Parker (2006); J.R.R. Tolkien by Jill C. Wheeler (2009); J.R.R. Tolkien by Mark Horne (2011); J.R.R. Tolkien by Alexandra Wallner (2011), a picture book in which Tolkien’s life is treated like a board game; and Caroline McAlister, John Ronald’s Dragons: The Story of J.R.R. Tolkien (2017). Each suffers to a degree from factual errors and (even allowing that these are necessarily short books) serious omissions; and many of the authors embroider or exaggerate for dramatic effect. Of these, Collins’ 1992 account is to be preferred for balance and accuracy, but the young person who has read The Lord of the Rings successfully should be equally capable of reading Carpenter’s Biography, and with greater reward.

      CONSIDERATIONS IN TOLKIEN BIOGRAPHY

      Almost all biographical writings about Tolkien rely to some degree on Carpenter, usually supplemented by reference to Tolkien’s published letters (1981). The best of the later biographies draw as well upon the large number of books and articles, by and about Tolkien, that have appeared since the Biography was published in 1977; the least of them are mere adaptations or reductions of Carpenter’s. The assiduous Tolkien biographer casts a wide net of research, but also must seek to understand what he finds, without assumptions based on his own age or culture – one finds, for instance, in some American accounts of Tolkien’s life, a lack of comprehension of English universities and their customs. It is possible to write an insightful biography without undertaking original research, relying only on existing sources (it is also possible, as we have seen in some books which claim to take a fresh approach to Tolkien’s biography, to turn the facts of his life into fiction); and yet, as shown especially by John Garth in Tolkien and the Great War and his other writings, and by the present book, important information is still to be gleaned from libraries and archives which can change the way we see Tolkien and interpret his works.

      Nor can the biographer afford to be uncritical of sources. In the course of writing the Companion and Guide we discovered errors and discrepancies even in standard published works, and inconsistencies in manuscripts and recorded reminiscences. A wealth of information is to be found in a series of recordings of Tolkien’s family and friends made soon after his death by Ann Bonsor, and first broadcast on Radio Oxford in 1974; but in some of these, looking back to times long past, memory demonstrably failed. Nevill Coghill, for one, recalled how as secretary of the Exeter College Essay Club (*Societies and clubs) he had asked Tolkien to read a paper at one of their meetings. Tolkien agreed, and said that the subject of his paper would be ‘the fall of Gondolin’. Coghill remembered that he then spent weeks searching in reference books in vain to find a mention of ‘Gondolin’, not realizing that it was the name of a city in Tolkien’s mythology. Records show, however, that Coghill had not held any office in the Essay Club when Tolkien read The Fall of Gondolin (see *The Book of Lost Tales) to its members, and in fact was elected to the Club only on 27 February 1920, less than two weeks before the event.

      Even Tolkien himself sometimes nodded. In referring to his lecture *On Fairy-Stories he twice gave an erroneous date for its delivery at the University of St Andrews (‘1940’ and ‘1938’, in fact 1939), and in his Foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings (1965) he wrote that the work ‘was begun soon after The Hobbit was written and before its publication in 1937’, though in fact he began the sequel between 16 and 19 December 1937, after publication of The Hobbit on 22 September 1937. The latter is clear from a reading of Letters, and yet occasionally one still sees it written in books about Tolkien that he began The Lord of the Rings before the publication of The Hobbit, uncritically accepting his misstatement of 1965.

      As we state in our preface, we did not write the Companion and Guide to be a substitute for Carpenter’s Biography, nor, even now in the second edition, do we feel that our book replaces Carpenter, but rather is a different, if much more comprehensive approach, to Tolkien’s life. We would agree with John Garth’s comment that ‘with the arrival of the Companion and Guide there ought now to be no excuse, beyond sheer laziness, for other biographers to use Humphrey Carpenter’s 1977 J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography as virtually the sole source of information about Tolkien’s life, as too many have done’ (review of the Companion and Guide, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), p. 258). On the contrary, David Bratman has suggested that the Companion and Guide, ‘while a chronology and encyclopedia, rather than a biography, instantly superseded Humphrey Carpenter’s long-standard Tolkien: A Biography as the source of first reference for biographical data on the man’ (‘The Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies 2006’, Tolkien Studies 9 (2009), p. 315).

      In the present century numerous books and videos have been produced which purport to be accounts of Tolkien’s life. Some, as seen here, are genuine in their aims and have value. Others – to put it charitably – are less careful in reporting facts, indeed are largely (if not entirely) products of their author’s imagination. See further, our 2015–16 blog posts at wayneandchristina.wordpress.com titled ‘Tolkien Biographies Continued’ (i.e. since our 2006 edition).

      ‘Bird and Baby’ (Eagle and Child) see Oxford and environs

Birmingham and environs. Both of Tolkien’s parents came from this major manufacturing centre in the English *West Midlands, and he himself spent sixteen of his early years in or near the city. His father (*Arthur Tolkien) and paternal grandparents (see *Tolkien family) lived at ‘Beechwood’ in Church Road in the southern suburb of Moseley, while his mother *Mabel and her family (see *Suffield family) were from Kings Heath still further south. Mabel’s grandfather, John Suffield the elder, had once been a prosperous draper and hosier in Old Lamb House, Bull Street, Birmingham (demolished 1886), and other members of the family were employed in the business.

      Tolkien himself came to Birmingham from *South Africa with his mother and brother at the end of April 1895; until summer 1896 they stayed at 9 Ash-field Road, Kings Heath with Mabel Tolkien’s parents and siblings. It was there in December 1895 that young Ronald Tolkien experienced his first wintry Christmas. In February 1896 his father died in Bloemfontein, and his mother decided that she and her sons should live independent of her parents’ crowded home, in the countryside where the boys could have fresh air. In summer 1896 Mabel rented a semi-detached cottage at 5 Gracewell Road (today 264a Wake Green Road) in the hamlet of *Sarehole not far to the east of Kings Heath, now part of the suburb of Hall Green. It was an idyllic setting, or became so in Tolkien’s memory, a rural paradise of fields, trees, and flowers and a working mill. But the interlude there was brief.

      In September 1900 Tolkien began to attend classes at *King Edward’s School in New Street in the centre of Birmingham, some four miles distant, and at first walked most of the way between home and school since trams did not run as far as Sarehole, and Mabel could not afford train fare. It was a long walk for the family also to Sunday services at St Anne’s, СКАЧАТЬ