LYCOS RETRIEVER
Christopher Tolkien: Books
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During his life in retirement, from 1959 up to his death in 1973, Tolkien increasingly turned into a figure of public attention and literary fame. The sale of his books was so profitable that he regretted he had not taken early retirement. While at first he wrote enthusiastic answers to reader inquiries, he became more and more suspicious of emerging Tolkien fandom, especially among the hippie movement in the United States. In a 1972 letter he deplores having become a cult-figure, but admits that
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Tolkien has explained the basis of some of his predilections: "The element (n)dor 'land', probably owes something to say such names as Labrador (a name that might as far as style and structure goes be Sindarin)" (Letters:383-4). He ... tells us how GON(O), GOND(O) got to be the Elvish root for "rock, stone" (as in Gondor "stone-land", Gondolin "Stone-song"): When he was eight years old, Tolkien read a book stating that nothing was known of the language of the pre-Celtic and pre-Roman tribes, except possibly ond "stone". Young John Ronald Reuel thought this word "fitted the meaning", so he remembered it and used it in his home-made languages many years later: Sindarin gond or gonn, Quenya ondo. (Letters:410. The book that provided Tolkien with the word ond was finally identified in Vinyar Tengwar #30: Celtic Britain by Professor John Rhys, that according to Carl F. Hostetter and Patrick Wynne "consists of over 300 densely-set pages and eschews neither etymological discussion, untranslated Latin passages, nor untransliterated Greek words". This was Tolkien's preferred reading at the age of eight.)
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Calendar containing Tolkien drawings issued by Ballantine Books. In 1973 Allen & Unwin and Ballantine issued calendars using same illustrations. In 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978 Allen & Unwin issued calendars using further drawings by Tolkien. Several of the drawings have ... been issued as posters and postcards. The calendar art is reprinted in Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1979.
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The People's of Middle-earth, (HoMe Vol XII), by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins 1996. This is the last volume in the History of Middle-earth series and is of particular linguistic interest because it has chapters addressing the Appendix on Languages in the third volume of LotR, and includes quite a bit of additional vocabulary, mostly in Quenya. The HarperCollins edition has a color frontispiece of the first page of the Dangweth Pengolodh in Tolkien's own calligraphy but this is not in the Houghton Mifflin edition, though it is referred to in the text of both books (at the beginning of Ch XIV). Abbreviated: PM
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``This is part of a 30-year project by Christopher Tolkien to bring all of J.R.R. Tolkien's works to the public eye," said Webster Younce, senior editor at Boston-based Houghton Mifflin, who handles the Tolkien books. ``He has devoted himself to that and has done a marvelous service to fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's work."
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The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth by Ruth S. Noel, first published in 1984 with many errors and continually in print since then (Houghton Mifflin). The section on Anglo-Saxon names is good, but there are many errors in the Elvish and the book has never been updated, nor the errors corrected since it was published but the price just keeps going up.
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