Middle-earth artists

Artists depicting Tolkien's fictional world

Gandalf fighting the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-dûm. Scraperboard by Alexander Korotich, 1984

Middle-earth artists have since the publication of The Hobbit in 1937 sought to capture aspects of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy novels in paintings and drawings. The first of these artists was Tolkien himself. He was followed in his lifetime by artists whose work he liked, such as Pauline Baynes, Mary Fairburn, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Ted Nasmith, and by some whose work he rejected, such as the American illustrators of The Hobbit and Horus Engels for the German edition of that novel.

After Tolkien's death in 1973, many artists have created illustrations of Middle-earth characters and landscapes, in media ranging from Alexander Korotich's scraperboard depictions of The Lord of the Rings to Jenny Dolfen's watercolours of The Silmarillion.

Scholars including Nils Agøy, Wayne Hammond, and Christina Scull have discussed Tolkien's views on illustration of fantasy. His recorded opinions range from his rejection of the use of images in his essay On Fairy-Stories, to agreeing the case for decorative images for certain purposes, and his actual creation of images to accompany the text in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

## Tolkien's artwork[edit]

Main article: Tolkien's artwork

J. R. R. Tolkien accompanied his Middle-earth fantasy writings with a wide variety of non-narrative materials, including paintings and drawings, calligraphy, and maps.[1] In his lifetime, some of his artworks were included in his novels The Hobbit[1] and The Lord of the Rings; others were used on the covers of different editions of these books,[1] and later on the cover of The Silmarillion.[T 1] Posthumously, collections of his artworks have been published, and academics have begun to evaluate him as an artist as well as an author.[1][2]

## Tolkien's views on illustration[edit]

Tolkien held strong opinions on illustration, but his statements made at different times are not easy to reconcile into a single point of view.[3][4]

### That illustrations are not helpful to fantasy[edit]

In his 1936 essay On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien wrote that "However good in themselves, illustrations do little good to fairy-stories."[4][T 2] He argued that by giving somewhat generic descriptions in words, the author leaves freedom for the reader's imagination. The Tolkien scholar Nils Agøy suggests that in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien makes frequent use of ambiguity for exactly this reason.[4] Tolkien's illustrations for The Hobbit provide, in the words of the Tolkien scholars Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, "backgrounds on which readers can paint their own mental pictures, directed by a text but not constrained by too specific an image".[5]

### That well-drawn illustrations could work[edit]

The 1938 American edition of The Hobbit was illustrated with five of Tolkien's own watercolour paintings.[1] Tolkien was at that time willing to have images in the actual text of the novel, illustrating specific episodes of the narrative. He commented in a 1938 letter to his American publishers, Houghton Mifflin, who were looking for illustrations for their forthcoming edition of The Hobbit, that they should seek an artist "who can draw [human figures]" as his own drawings of hobbits were "an unsafe guide", some of them "very ill-drawn".[T 3] He mentions, too, that there could be "special illustrations of episodes" in the story where the hobbit Bilbo might appear wearing boots, which he says Bilbo acquired in Rivendell, but in the other illustrations he should be drawn with bare feet.[T 3]

### That illustrations should be in keeping with the text[edit]

In 1946, Tolkien voiced his objections to Horus Engels's illustrations for a German edition of The Hobbit. He described the work as having "certain merits", but "too 'Disnified' for my taste: Bilbo with a dribbling nose, and Gandalf as a figure of vulgar fun rather than the Odinic wanderer that I think of".[T 4]

Tolkien found Horus Engels's 1946 illustrations too "Disnified", disliking both "Bilbo with a dribbling nose, and Gandalf as a figure of vulgar fun".[T 4]

Tolkien thought that Milein Cosman's illustrations unhelpfully resembled the fashionable Edward Ardizzone's work (example pictured).[T 5]

Tolkien felt that the requirements of a good illustration were not the same as for being a respected or fashionable artist. When Allen & Unwin were working with the artist Milein Cosman on illustrations for Farmer Giles of Ham in 1948, Tolkien described the sample drawings as resembling the work of Feliks Topolski or Edward Ardizzone, commenting that he wasn't "much interested in [their] fashionableness".[T 5] That did not make up, in his opinion, for "their lack of resemblance to their text".[T 5] He stated, among more detailed objections, that the artist should have located the illustrations in Oxfordshire; that the trees were poorly drawn; and that the dragon was "absurd. Ridiculously coy, and quite incapable of performing any of the tasks laid on him by the author."[T 5] In short, he found Cosman's samples "wholly out of keeping with the style or manner of the text".[T 5]

By 1949, Allen & Unwin had found another artist to illustrate Farmer Giles of Ham, Pauline Baynes. Tolkien expressed delight at the result, writing that the images were "more than illustrations, they are a collateral theme", explaining that they "they reduced my text to a commentary on the drawings."[T 6]

### That freedom should be left for the reader's imagination[edit]

Tolkien told the illustrator Cor Blok in 1961 that "he was not in favour of illustrated editions".[4] However, Blok agreed with Tolkien that an illustrator should omit anything non-essential from an image.[4] In a letter to Baynes, who had by then illustrated several of his minor works, Tolkien similarly mentioned his objections to illustration, but stated that a case could be made for "illustration (or decoration!) applied to small things".[T 7] Agøy comments that Tolkien's remarks to these artists are "not unambiguous", but taken together suggest that he believed that freedom should be left for the reader.[4]

### Contradictory opinions[edit]

The artist Ruth Lacon argues that Tolkien's actions, preparing illustrations for his own works, conflict with what he wrote about their use. She suggests that images are especially useful in complex texts like The Silmarillion.[3] Noury comments that one of the paradoxes around Tolkien is that he hoped his subcreated world would live on after him, but imposed strict requirements on anyone who sought to illustrate his novels.[6]

Tolkien's views on illustration[7][4] Style  | Application  | Example artist

|
|

Inaccurate
failing to match text, tone wrong  | Unusable  | Horus Engels[T 4]
Milein Cosman[T 5]
Fussy
destroying intentional ambiguity[T 2] | Undesirable  |
Decorative
attractive but without any sort of heroic tone  | Minor (non-Middle-earth) tales, vistas, maps  | Pauline Baynes
Illustrative
with "noble or awe-inspiring" quality  | In or alongside the text  | Margrethe II of Denmark[8]
Mary Fairburn
Tolkien's own artwork

## In dialogue with Tolkien: 1937–1973[edit]

### Mary Fairburn[edit]

In May 1968, the English artist Mary Fairburn sent Tolkien several illustrations of The Lord of the Rings, mostly in coloured ink. He replied that they were "splendid. They are better pictures in themselves and also show far more attention to the text than any that have yet been submitted to me".[7] He added "I am beginning to ... think that an illustrated edition [of The Lord of the Rings] might be a good thing."[7]

The project went no further, as Tolkien, aged 76, injured his leg and was in the process of moving house from Oxford to Bournemouth; and the removals team seriously disorganised his papers. In October 1968 he wrote to Fairburn that his publisher Rayner Unwin would take "some months" to decide whether to publish an illustrated edition of The Lord of the Rings, mentioning that black-and-white illustrations were more likely. She states that she created black-and-white versions of 26 of her paintings, one for each chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring and the first four chapters of The Two Towers, the last being "Treebeard". Fairburn lost many of the illustrations in repeated house moves; nine survive,[a] of which one, a coloured painting of "Galadriel at the Well in Lórien" came into Tolkien's possession.[7] Fairburn's illustrations remained unknown to scholars until 2012;[9][7] her work was finally published in the Tolkien Calendar 2015.[10]

Detail of "The Pass on Mount Caradhras", Mary Fairburn's 1968 image for "The Ring Goes South".[b] Tolkien liked the work enough to think of an illustrated The Lord of the Rings.[7]

### Pauline Baynes[edit]

Further information: A Map of Middle-earth

Pauline Baynes created the illustrations for some of Tolkien's minor works, such as the 1949 Farmer Giles of Ham and the 1962 The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.[11] In 1969, Tolkien's publisher Allen & Unwin commissioned her to paint "A Map of Middle-earth". Tolkien supplied her with copies of his draft maps for The Lord of the Rings, and annotated her copy of his son Christopher's 1954 map for The Fellowship of the Ring. Allen & Unwin published Baynes's map as a poster in 1970. It was decorated with a header and footer showing some of Tolkien's characters, and vignettes of some of his stories' locations. The poster map became "iconic" of Middle-earth.[12][13][14][15]

The scholar of English literature Paul Tankard comments that "Tolkien clearly admired Pauline Baynes' work, in certain ways and for certain purposes: for illustrations to his slighter and non-Middle-earthly tales, for vistas and for maps—but not for inside and alongside of the narrative of The Lord of the Rings."[7] In short, Tolkien liked her work and found it usefully decorative, but felt that it lacked the "noble or awe-inspiring" quality that Middle-earth illustrations needed, giving as an instance "her ridiculous picture of the dragon" in Farmer Giles of Ham.[7][16]

Tolkien liked Pauline Baynes's decorative illustrations for his minor works such as Farmer Giles of Ham, but thought her style unsuitable for use inside his major fantasy works, as it was not "noble or awe-inspiring"; he found her dragon "ridiculous".[7]

### Margrethe II of Denmark[edit]

Crown Princess Margrethe (later Queen Margrethe II of Denmark), an accomplished and critically acclaimed painter, was inspired to create illustrations to The Lord of the Rings in the early 1970s. Tolkien liked her woodcut-style drawings, seeing in them a resemblance to the style of some of his own artwork.[17][18][8] In 1977, Queen Margrethe's drawings were published in the Danish translation of the book,[19] redrawn by the British artist Eric Fraser.[T 8]

Woodcut-style illustration of Éowyn fighting the Nazgul's fell beast at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, by Margrethe II of Denmark. Tolkien liked her work, seeing in it a style resembling his own.[8]

### Ted Nasmith[edit]

While still in high school, Ted Nasmith painted some illustrations for The Hobbit, and in 1972 mailed photographs of a selection of his artworks to Tolkien, including a gouache of The Unexpected Party at the start of The Hobbit. Tolkien responded by letter a few weeks later, both praising the work and commenting that the rendition of Bilbo Baggins seemed a little too childlike. This encouraged Nasmith to strive for a more literal interpretation of Tolkien's works.[20] He later created the illustrations for some editions of The Silmarillion.[21]

Nasmith's first attempt at illustrating Tolkien, his 1972 gouache painting The Unexpected Party depicting a scene from the start of The Hobbit. Tolkien commented that it made Bilbo look like a child.[20]

## Independent voices[edit]

### Tove Jansson, 1962[edit]

The Swedish-speaking Finnish author, novelist, painter and illustrator Tove Jansson, who had written and illustrated the Moomin books, illustrated Swedish and Finnish translations of The Hobbit. Among these is a very large Gollum for the 1962 Swedish translation, given that Tolkien had not said how large Gollum was.[22] The scholar of literature Björn Sundmark states that her work helped to define how Middle-earth fantasy could be depicted visually.[23]

Tove Jansson's very large Gollum, 1962[22]

### Covers and calendars[edit]

Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, usually called the Brothers Hildebrandt, were Tolkien illustrators. They were known especially for their Tolkien Calendars, which appeared between 1976 and 2006.[24] The illustrator John Howe said he got "a real spark" from the Hildebrandts' calendars, as they showed him that Tolkien's novels could be illustrated.[25]

Illustration of the Fellowship of the Ring by the Brothers Hildebrandt for the 1976 Tolkien Calendar. The approach prompted John Howe to become a Middle-earth artist.[25]

The American artist Tim Kirk created a series of paintings of The Lord of the Rings that became the 1975 Tolkien Calendar.[26] The British artist Jimmy Cauty created best-selling posters of The Lord of the Rings in 1976 and The Hobbit in 1980 for the retailer Athena.[27][28] Paul R. Gregory's Middle-earth paintings, created from 1978 onwards, have appeared on the covers of some 30 rock music albums;[29][30] his work has however been described as inaccurate, departing from Tolkien's text.[31] The Swedish author and translator Inger Edelfeldt illustrated the covers of Swedish translations of The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Book of Lost Tales between 1978 and 1988.[32] From 1991, the German illustrator Anke Eißmann has created numerous covers for Der Flammifer von Westernis, the publication of the German Tolkien Society.[33][34]

### Through Russian eyes[edit]

In 1984, the Russian artist Alexander Korotich made a series of scraperboard engravings of The Lord of the Rings.[35]

The Russian artist Sergey Yuhimov (Сергей Юхимов) illustrated a 1993 edition of The Lord of the Rings in the style of the iconography of the Russian Orthodox Church. This use of symbolism may have added layers of meaning to those already intended by Tolkien.[36] Open Culture has described the work as "vivid, stylistically Medieval, religious-icon-saturated".[37]

Sergei Yuhimov illustrated a 1993 Russian translation of The Lord of the Rings in the style of the iconography of the Russian Orthodox Church. The work has been described as "vivid, stylistically Medieval, religious-icon-saturated".[37]

## Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy: 2001–2003[edit]

### Concept art[edit]

The Tolkien illustrators John Howe and Alan Lee became well-known for their Middle-earth artwork — Lee for illustrated editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and Howe for the cover artwork to several Tolkien publications. Both men worked as concept artists in the creation of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, their designs leading directly to those in the films.[38] In 2004, Lee won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction on the film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.[39] Nasmith had been invited to work as a concept artist for Peter Jackson's films but he had declined.[40] The films attracted a large audience, making the artistic conception of Jackson's artists influential, indeed creating a stereotyped image of Middle-earth and its races of Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Hobbits shared by fans and artists alike.[41]

Alan Lee's illustration of Orthanc defined its depiction in Peter Jackson's 2002 film The Two Towers.[38]

## After Jackson: 2004 onwards[edit]

### Jenny Dolfen: from fan art to recognised artistry[edit]

Detail of Jenny Dolfen's painting "Eärendil the Mariner", which in 2014 won her the first of her awards for best artwork from the Tolkien Society[42]

Jenny Dolfen has made a series of watercolour paintings of scenes from The Silmarillion.[42] She has been described as the best-known of the many self-taught Middle-earth artists; Aurore Noury comments that her fame among Tolkien fans has given her a hybrid status, being both a self-taught fan artist and a recognised and published artist.[43] Dolfen has won three awards from The Tolkien Society for her paintings.[42]

Jenny Dolfen's The Tolkien Society Awards for Best Artwork[42] Year  | Awarded for  | Notes

|
|

2014 | "Eärendil the Mariner" | Painting of Eärendil, a character from the first beginnings of Tolkien's legendarium
2018 | "The Hunt" | "Finrod Felagund joins Fëanoreans Maedhros and Maglor on a hunt in Eastern Beleriand"
2020 | "The Professor" | A painting design for the T-shirt celebrating 50 years of The Tolkien Society, with Middle-earth characters and places within the outline of a pipe-smoking J. R. R. Tolkien

### Both fantasy and botany[edit]

The illustrator Graham A. Judd has prepared woodcut illustrations to support his father, the botanist Walter S. Judd's 2017 Flora of Middle-earth. According to the Tolkien scholar Martin Simonson, the woodcuts "combine accurate representations of the morphological features of most of the plants under study with symbolically rendered scenes from the legendarium, and they thus manage to convey the mixed essence of the book as such: art and science."[44][45]

Detail of woodcut illustration of the fictional Niphredil flower, with inset vignette of Aragorn and Arwen on a lawn of the flowers on Cerin Amroth, for the 2017 Flora of Middle-earth, by Graham A. Judd.[45] The image thus combines fantasy and botany, "art and science".[44]

## See also[edit]

* List of things named after J. R. R. Tolkien and his works, including astronomical objects, companies, genes, ships, places, and species
* Works inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien, including films, books, radio plays, music, and games

## Notes[edit]

1. ^ The surviving images are "The Old Forest"; "The Inn at Bree"; "The Pass on Mount Caradhras"; "The Bridge at Khazad-dûm"; "Galadriel at the Well in Lórien"; "The Great River"; "Treebeard with Pippin and Merry"; "Gandalf on the Tower of Orthanc"; and "The Dead Marshes", also called "Sam and Frodo in Mordor with a Nazgûl". The image of Gollum that she had sent to Tolkien (and which he returned with the other samples) is lost.[7]
2. ^ "The Ring Goes South" is a chapter in The Fellowship of the Ring, namely book 2, chapter 3.

## References[edit]

### Primary[edit]

1. ^ Tolkien 1977, Front and back cover
2. ^ a b Tolkien 1983, "On Fairy-Stories", Note E.
3. ^ a b Carpenter 1981, #27 to Houghton Mifflin, c. March or April 1938
4. ^ a b c Carpenter 1981, #107 to Sir Stanley Unwin, 7 December 1946
5. ^ a b c d e f Carpenter 1981, #116 to Allen & Unwin, 5 August 1948
6. ^ Carpenter 1981, #120 to Allen & Unwin, 16 March 1949
7. ^ Carpenter 1981, #235 to Pauline Baynes, 6 December 1961
8. ^ Tolkien 1977, Title page of The Folio Society edition

### Secondary[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e Holmes 2013, pp. 27–32.
2. ^ MacLeod & Smol 2017, pp. 115–131.
3. ^ a b Lacon, Ruth (14 January 2012). "To Illustrate or Not to Illustrate? That is the Question…". Tolkien Library.
4. ^ a b c d e f g Agøy 2013, pp. 51–52.
5. ^ Hammond & Scull 1995, p. 98.
6. ^ Noury 2020, Note 7.
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tankard, Paul (2017). ""Akin to my own Inspiration": Mary Fairburn and the Art of Middle-earth". Tolkien Studies. Project MUSE. 14 (1): 133–154. doi:10.1353/tks.2017.0010. ISSN 1547-3163.
8. ^ a b c "One Queen to Rule Them All: Margrethe II of Denmark". National Museum of Women in the Arts. 25 February 2013. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
9. ^ Tankard, Paul (14 September 2012). "An Unknown Vision of Middle-earth: Mary Fairburn: Tolkien Illustrator". Times Literary Supplement.
10. ^ Collier, Pieter (26 March 2014). "Tolkien Calendar 2015 features artwork from artist Mary Fairburn from The Lord of the Rings". Tolkien Library. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
11. ^ Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel; Baynes, Pauline (illus.) (1962). The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. London: George Allen & Unwin.
12. ^ McIlwaine 2018, p. 384.
13. ^ Kennedy 2016.
14. ^ Bodleian 2016.
15. ^ Scull & Hammond 2017, pp. 112–113.
16. ^ Hammond & Scull 2006b, volume 2, page 422.
17. ^ Thygesen, Peter (Autumn 1999). "Queen Margrethe II: Denmark's monarch for a modern age". Scandinavian Review. Retrieved 12 March 2006.
18. ^ "Margrethe and Henrik Biography". Royalinsight.net. 16 April 1940. Archived from the original on 30 October 2011. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
19. ^ "Queen Margrethe II of Denmark". Hello Magazine. Retrieved 29 May 2006.
20. ^ a b "Ted Nasmith". Radio Rivendell. 25 April 2012. Archived from the original on 5 May 2012. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
21. ^ Hoyt, Randy (1 January 2009). "Illustrating Tolkien: Ted Nasmith Interview". Journey to the Sea.
22. ^ a b Holownia, Olga (31 December 2014). "'Hell, what a chance to have a go at the classics': Tove Jansson's take on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Hunting of the Snark, and The Hobbit". Barnboken - Journal of Children's Literature Research. 37. doi:10.14811/clr.v37i0.191.
23. ^ Sundmark, Björn (2020). "The Translation and Visualization of Tolkien's The Hobbit into Swedish, the Aesthetics of Fantasy, and Tove Jansson's Illustrations". Translating and Transmediating Children's Literature. Cham: Springer International Publishing. p. 117–132. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-52527-9_7. ISBN 978-3-030-52526-2.
24. ^ "The Art of The Brothers Hildebrandt". Archived from the original on 29 April 2011.
25. ^ a b "Biography". John Howe. Archived from the original on 6 January 2012. Retrieved 7 January 2012.
26. ^ "Kirk, Tim". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 12 August 2018. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
27. ^ Spencer, Neil (31 October 1993). "The Observer Review Page: A Guerrilla Raid on the Arts Establishment". The Guardian.
28. ^ "Jimmy Cauty's Athena Posters". KLF Online. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
29. ^ "Paul Raymond Gregory – Heavy Metal's Lord Of the Rings". Great Album Covers. Great Album Covers. Retrieved 14 June 2020.
30. ^ Gregory, Paul Raymond (1949). "The Death of Theoden". Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
31. ^ Lacon, Ruth (21 January 2013). "Review of Beyond Time and Place - The Art of Paul Raymond Gregory". Tolkien Library. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
32. ^ Rose, Simon (3 December 2002). "The Two Towers - A J. R. R. Tolkien Museum Trail". Culture24. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
33. ^ Gand, André (21 November 2009). "Interview with Anke Eißmann". Tolkien Bücher.
34. ^ "Deutsche Tolkien Gesellschaft" (in German). German Tolkien Society. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
35. ^ "Александр Коротич. Иллюстрации к произведениям Дж" [Р. Р. Толкина Alexander Korotich. Illustrations for the works of J. R. R. Tolkien]. Uraic.ru (in Russian). 2013. Archived from the original on 18 October 2016. Retrieved 10 September 2023. "The exhibition presents individual illustrations for "The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien, created by artist Alexander Korotich from the second half of the 1980s until mid-1997, when the folder with most of the sheets was lost, as well as a number of illustrations for the book J. R. R. Tolkien. Fairy tales by the publishing house "Ural market", released in 1993."
36. ^ Merriner, Joel (2018). The Other Middle-earth: Intertextuality and Iconography in Sergei Iukhimov’s Illustrations for The Lord of the Rings. University of Plymouth.
37. ^ a b "Illustrations of The Lord of the Rings in Russian Iconography Style (1993)". Open Culture. 4 June 2014. Retrieved 5 November 2023.
38. ^ a b Svitil 2007, pp. 75–76.
39. ^ "76th Academy Awards". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 19 February 2006. Retrieved 29 May 2006.
40. ^ Shepherd, Wendy (3 February 2004). "Interview With Ted Nasmith, Tolkien Artist". Dreamish.com. Archived from the original on 9 February 2004.
41. ^ Noury 2020, Note 9.
42. ^ a b c d "Awards - Previous Winners". The Tolkien Society. 29 October 2016. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
43. ^ Noury 2020, Note 11.
44. ^ a b Simonson, Martin (2017). "[Review] Flora of Middle-earth (2017) by Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd". Journal of Tolkien Research. 4 (2). article 9.
45. ^ a b Judd, Walter S.; Judd, Graham A. (2017). Flora of Middle-Earth: Plants of J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-027631-7.

### Sources[edit]

* Agøy, Nils Ivar (2013). "Vague or Vivid?: Descriptions in 'The Lord of the Rings'". Tolkien Studies. Project MUSE. 10 (1): 49–67. doi:10.1353/tks.2013.0011. ISSN 1547-3163. S2CID 170171727.
* Bodleian (13 June 2016). "Rare map of Middle-earth goes on display at the Bodleian Libraries". Bodleian Library. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
* Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (1981). The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-31555-2.
* Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (1995). J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator. Illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-74816-X.
* Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (2006b). The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader's Guide. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-007-14918-2.
* Holmes, John R. (2013) [2007]. "Art and Illustrations by Tolkien". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 27–32. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
* Kennedy, Maev (3 May 2016). "Tolkien annotated map of Middle-earth acquired by Bodleian Library". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
* McIlwaine, Catherine (2018). Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth. Bodleian Library. p. 384\. ISBN 978-1851244850.
* MacLeod, Jeffrey J.; Smol, Anna (2017). "Visualizing the Word: Tolkien as Artist and Writer". Tolkien Studies. 14 (1): 115–131. doi:10.1353/tks.2017.0009. S2CID 171923300.
* Noury, Aurore (2020). Où se trouve la Terre du Milieu? De l’incarnation d’un nouvel imaginaire collectif dans l'espace quotidien [Where is Middle-earth? On the incarnation of a new collective imagination in everyday space]. Actes du colloque 2020 du Laboratoire des Imaginaires (in French). pp. 185–205. ISBN 978-2-9574143-0-7. hal-03884812.
* Scull, Christina; Hammond, Wayne G. (2017). The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. Vol. 2 (2nd ed.). HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-0082-1454-8.
* Svitil, Torene (2007). So You Want to Work in Animation & Special Effects?. Enslow Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7660-2737-4.
* Tolkien, J. R. R. (1977). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Silmarillion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-25730-2.
* Tolkien, J. R. R. (1983). The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. London: Allen & Unwin. OCLC 417591085.

* v
* t
* e

Middle-earth

* J. R. R. Tolkien
* Bibliography
* Canon
* Legendarium
* Outline

Works|

* The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
* Beren and Lúthien
* Bilbo's Last Song
* The Children of Húrin
* The Fall of Gondolin
* The Fall of Númenor
* The Hobbit
* The Lord of the Rings
* The Fellowship of the Ring
* "The Shadow of the Past"
* "The Council of Elrond"
* The Two Towers
* The Return of the King
* "The Scouring of the Shire"
* "The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen"
* The Silmarillion
* "Ainulindalë"
* Round World version
* Unfinished Tales
* The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

History of
composition|

* John D. Rateliff
* The History of The Hobbit
* Christopher Tolkien
* The History of Middle-earth
* 1–2 The Book of Lost Tales
* Ælfwine
* 3 The Lays of Beleriand
* 4 The Shaping of Middle-earth
* 5 The Lost Road and Other Writings
* 6–9 The History of The Lord of the Rings
* The Notion Club Papers
* 10 Morgoth's Ring
* 11 The War of the Jewels
* 12 The Peoples of Middle-earth
* Carl F. Hostetter
* The Nature of Middle-earth

Fictional
universe|

| Peoples,
Monsters|

* Ainur
* Maiar
* Balrogs
* Wizards
* Valar
* Dragons
* Dwarves
* Eagles
* Elves
* Half-elven
* Noldor
* Sundering
* Ents
* Hobbits
* Men
* Beornings
* Drúedain
* Dúnedain
* Orcs
* Trolls

|

Characters|

* First and Second Ages
* Celebrimbor
* Eärendil and Elwing
* Elendil
* Fëanor
* Fingolfin
* Finwë and Míriel
* Gil-galad
* Húrin
* Isildur
* Lúthien and Beren
* Melian
* Morgoth
* Thingol
* Tuor and Idril
* Túrin Turambar
* Ungoliant
* Third Age
* Elrond
* Galadriel
* Gandalf
* Glorfindel
* Goldberry
* Gollum
* Saruman
* Sauron
* Tom Bombadil

Places|

* First and Second Ages
* Beleriand
* Númenor
* Valinor
* Third Age
* Bree
* Esgaroth
* Gondor
* Harad
* Isengard
* Lonely Mountain
* Lothlórien
* Mirkwood
* Mordor
* Moria
* Rivendell
* Rohan
* The Shire
* Bag End

Objects|

* Mithril
* Palantír
* Red Book of Westmarch
* Rings of Power
* One Ring
* Silmarils
* Two Trees of Valinor
* List of weapons and armour

Analysis|

| Elements|

* Artwork
* Family trees
* Heraldry
* Languages
* Adûnaic
* Black Speech
* Khuzdul
* Quenya
* Sindarin
* Maps
* Poetry
* Scripts
* Cirth
* Sarati
* Tengwar

|

Themes|

* Ancestry as guide to character
* Architecture
* Christianity
* Cosmology
* Death and immortality
* Decline and fall
* Economy
* England
* Environmentalism
* First World War
* Forests
* Frame stories
* Heroism
* Luck and fate
* Magic
* Mental illness
* Modernism
* Music
* Naming of weapons
* Northern courage
* Paganism
* Plants
* Psychological journeys
* Quests
* Sentience dilemma
* Sound and language
* Time
* Trees

Literary|

* Tolkien's impact on fantasy
* Influences
* Beowulf
* Celtic
* Classical world
* Finnish language and literature
* Medieval
* Modern
* Norse
* Philology
* Shakespeare
* Prose style
* Ambiguity

Geographic|

* The Atlas of Middle-earth
* Journeys of Frodo
* A Map of Middle-earth

Adaptations,
legacy|

| Artists|

* Pauline Baynes
* Brothers Hildebrandt
* Jenny Dolfen
* Mary Fairburn
* John Howe
* Alexander Korotich
* Alan Lee
* Tom Loback
* Margrethe II of Denmark
* Ted Nasmith

|

Composers|

* Bo Hansson
* Johan de Meij
* Symphony No. 1 The Lord of the Rings
* Howard Shore
* Music of The Lord of the Rings film series
* Music of The Hobbit film series
* Bear McCreary
* Music of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power television series
* Blind Guardian
* Nightfall in Middle-Earth

Settings|

* Donald Swann
* The Road Goes Ever On
* Poems and Songs of Middle Earth
* The Tolkien Ensemble
* An Evening in Rivendell
* A Night in Rivendell
* At Dawn in Rivendell
* Leaving Rivendell

Other media|

* Middle-earth Enterprises
* Film
* Video games
* Works inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien
* Things named after Tolkien and his works

Literary
criticism|

* The Complete Guide to Middle-earth
* A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien
* Master of Middle-Earth
* Picturing Tolkien
* J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century
* The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide
* The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia
* The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion
* Perilous Realms
* The Road to Middle-Earth
* Splintered Light
* Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England'
* Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings
* A Tolkien Compass
* Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth
* Tolkien's Legendarium
* Tolkien and the Great War
* The Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien
* The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary

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