J.R.R.Tolkien : A Collection
This site is a big list of all the Tolkien books and ephemera I’ve collected over the years. It’s fair to say I was a proper Tolkien nut as a kid. Still slightly nutty even now.
I hope you enjoy my collection, and thanks for visiting!
Mike
THE COLLECTION : All my Tolkien stuff
About : About this website
F.A.Q. : Frequently asked questions
Contact me : Contact details
Tolkien Fonts : Truetype fonts to download
Index : Index of every item
The Collection
I have divided my Tolkien collection into three main categories :
(1) First, there are Books by Tolkien – these are all works by J.R.R.Tolkien himself – further divided up into three sections :
Middle-earth related (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and all the other works set in the world of Middle-earth)
‘Other Works’ (All the remaining stories and writings by JRRT – Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles etc, plus all of Tolkien’s academic works)
Treasuries/Collections – this section includes any editions (e.g. The Tolkien Reader) where several different titles are included in the same book.
(2) The second main section is called Books Concerning Tolkien – these are basically any book about Tolkien or his stories, and not written by JRRT himself. So this includes all the literary studies and criticism, artworks, maps and languages etc. This section also includes all the various movie related books too.
(3) The final section I’ve called Tolkien Miscellanea. This is pretty much ‘everything else’ – so here you’ll find sub-sections for things like Tolkien calendars, Tolkien posters, CD’s, vinyl LP’s and so on.
I recently gave this site a little refresh so it could be more easily read on mobile devices and tablets. If your screen is big enough, you should always be able to see the full list of sections over on the right-hand side of the screen. If you’re on your phone, then you should still be able to get the whole list of categories to unfold by clicking the little menu symbol top-left.
If you click the link ‘The Collection‘ you will get a big list of all the items, with the most recent additions listed first. Click the title or the little preview picture (or the link that says ‘more details on this item’) to go to the page for that item. Sometimes there’s a little more information there, and occasionally some comments from other visitors.
Collecting Tolkien
I first read ‘The Hobbit’ when I was a young lad. I think I was 9. My best friend at school noticed me reading the ‘Narnia’ books and suggested I have a go at Tolkien. I saved up my pocket money and bought this Unwin Books paperback edition. I read it over a few evenings, and was pretty much hooked! As soon as I’d saved up some more cash I got this set of Lord of the Rings books and read them furiously. And then I read them all over again.
Then I started searching for all the rest of Tolkien’s works that were available at the time – The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wootton Major, Tree & Leaf, The Road Goes Ever On… and On and On…!
And then I started tracking down books about Tolkien and Middle-earth – Lin Carter’s A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings, Paul Kocher’s Master of Middle-earth, Tolkien & The Critics… basically anything I could find.
I joined The Tolkien Society, and before long my bedroom was covered in Tolkien posters, I was listening to Tolkien records, and playing Tolkien games.
I can’t remember exactly when I started buying different editions of the same books, but at some point I started visiting charity shops and second-hand bookshops and would feel an irresistible urge to buy anything by Tolkien, often a book I already had, just with a different cover. I picked up some real bargains back then, like this first edition Lord of the Rings – it’s a 1959 set, in lovely condition, for just a few quid. I had no idea it was a first edition at the time – it just had funny looking covers I hadn’t ever seen before.
Eventually, of course, I started buying identical copies of books I had seen before. And that is why I now have six of these.
Anyway, there it is.
Tolkien Collectors
These days I live too far from a big city to get to browse the old bookshops any more. We have one second-hand bookshop within driving distance, and I pop in occasionally, but they hardly ever have any Tolkien books. But on the plus side, we now have the INTERNET, and eBay and abebooks, and I have managed to get a few nice additions to my collection that way.
Better still, I’m also now on Instagram (@Tolkien.Books), Twitter (@TolkienBooks) and Facebook (TolkienBooks) and have discovered there’s a wonderful, vibrant and friendly community of fellow Tolkien fans and collectors from all around the world. It’s great to see pictures of their treasures and lucky finds, and magnificent shelfies..!
Honestly, when I was a kid, I thought I was the only one doing this.
