Oronzo Cilli - Tolkiens Library: An Annotated Checklist: Second Edition Revised and Expanded

Tolkiens Library

An Annotated Checklist

Second Edition

Revised and Expanded

Oronzo Cilli

Foreword

Tom Shippey

Afterword

Verlyn Flieger

Text Copyright 2023 Oronzo Cilli

Cover Illustration 2023 Jay Johnstone

First published by Luna Press Publishing, Edinburgh, 2023

First Edition published by Luna Press Publishing, Edinburgh, 2019

The right of Oronzo Cilli to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Tolkiens Library: An Annotated Checklist Second Edition, Revised and Expanded 2023. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owners. Nor can it be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

The quotations from Tolkiens writings and the unrestricted Tolkien Papers in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, have been made available with the kind permission of the Tolkien Estate, and are acknowledged in detail in the Bibliography.

ISBN-13: 978-1-913387-78-5

To Christopher and Priscilla Tolkien,

from the depth of my heart, for everything,

for every single day of these past fifty years

spent in sharing your father with us.

Acknowledgements

28 February 2022

Bookishness was, after all, another trait shared by the two authors. The Legend Prologue reported that Chaucer owned a library of sixty bokes olde and newe, a large personal collection at the time, and Tolkien too became an avid book-collector, often photographed in front of bookshelves at home and in college rooms, his walls lined with hefty volumes from floor to ceiling, unlike the rooms of C. S. Lewis whose visitors were struck by the meagreness of his personal library. [Bowers 2019, 152]

Tolkiens Library has brought me emotions and satisfaction exceeding all my reasonable expectations. It is a work, however, that I have never felt completed or exhausted, but that I continued to update and improve even after the 9th August 2019, the day on which it was unveiled to the general public.

For this new edition, I have to thank with great pleasure, and not just out of simple courtesy, those who have trusted me, and continue to, those who have sent me advice, suggestions, indicated books, written reviews, or quoted me in their valuable works.

The first thank you is to Jay Johnstone. It was my great fault that I realised late that I had not spent any words of gratitude on him in the first edition for the wonderful cover he made, and to which the book owes much of its success. This was an unforgivable shortcoming that I would like to remedy because Jay is a great artist and an exceptional person. Therefore, a double thanks goes to him, for the first edition and for this second edition, which features another masterpiece by him on the cover.

As I wrote, Tolkiens Library has brought me great joy and here I feel I need to connect some of these feelings to the recognition from the Best Book award at The Tolkien Society Awards 2020 and to being among the five finalists of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies 2021 . To those who have helped this to happen and to those who selected my book, I can only express my gratitude.

Everything was possible thanks, above all, to Francesca Barbini, the guide and soul of Luna Press, whose support and advice was never lacking, to help improve our Tolkiens Library . Also, Tom Shippey, who, after honouring me with the preface, co-presented the book with me in Birmingham in August 2019, during an extraordinary event organised by the Tolkien Society to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. It was, for me, one of the most beautiful and unforgettable days of my Tolkien experience.

Let me also thank those who have taken the time to read, review, quote me in their writings, or provide me with material and information useful for the improvement of Tolkiens Library :

Damien Bador, Adelaide Bailey, Luk Bajgar, Chiara Bertoglio, Kate Bond, Jos Mara Miranda Boto, Cristina Casagrande, Pieter Collier, Gianluca Comastri, Andoni Cossio, Giovanni Carmine Costabile, Samuel Coto, Janet Brennan Croft, Ryszard Derdziski, Bradford Lee Eden, Jeremy Edmonds, Dimitra Fimi, Verlyn Flieger, William Fliss, John Garth, Thomas Honegger, Wayne G. Hammond, T. Q. Kelly, Margaret Kelleher, Ronald Kyrmse, Erick Carvalho de Mello, Martin S. Monsch, Adriano Monti Buzzetti, Bragi orgrmur lafsson, Holly Ordway, Vincenzo Pasquarella, Giuseppe Pezzini, James Tauber, Ivano Sassanelli, Christina Scull, Eduardo Segura, Brian Sibley, Enrico Spadaro, Guglielmo Spirito O.F.M., Claudio Testi, Lars Tingelstad, Talking Tolkien, Hamish Williams, Nelson Goering, Paulo Lages, Rene Vink, Vanessa Williamson, and Maria Zielenbach.

This new edition of Tolkiens Library has been enriched thanks to the advice and suggestions of many scholars and readers, but to some friends in particular it owes the improvement of some of its parts. I thank John Bowers, who shared his reflections and notes with me relating to the collection of Tolkiens books in the Bodleian Library, and Catherine McIlwaine for her precious advice and words of trust. To Helmut W. Pesch and Norbert Schrer, I owe the precious notes with corrections and suggestions on the correct spelling of all the mentions in the beautiful German language. To Jessica Yates, for her remarkable suggestions and indications, and to Douglas A. Anderson, my utmost gratitude for taking the time to research and share information on several books that belonged to Tolkien which over the years ended up in auctions and private collections, and which I had not included in the first edition.

In addition to the foreword by Tom Shippey, whom I still thank today for the words he dedicated to me, the Second Edition of Tolkiens Library is enriched by the afterword by Verlyn Flieger, a scholar of exceptional rarity, who has agreed to add her name, a reference point for scholars and Tolkien readers, to this humble work of mine. I hope even more that Tolkiens Library can live up to the time and words that Tom and Verlyn gave me.

Tolkiens Library still has many things to say and many indications to give to those travellers wishing to journey along roads not yet travelled and who can contribute to making Tolkien better known and appreciated because, as Tom Shippey says, the best guide to an authors mind is through his books.

I hope that this will continue to be so for many.

To the thanks for this second edition, allow me to add and renew them for those who have journeyed with me, in different forms and times, during the writing of the first edition:

Mahd Brecq, Bradford Lee Eden, Peter Gilliver, Neil Holford, Jeremy H. Marshall, Wim Meeuws (Thorntons Bookshop), Aaron OBrien, Alan Reynolds, Elena Rossi, Charles and Styles.

I should also mention the writers and editors who update their websites daily, including all the information they have gathered on Tolkiens life and works: the Tolkien Library of Pieter Collier, the Tolkien Collectors Guide of Jeremy Edmonds, and the Tolkien Gateway. In each of these, I found precious information which was, most importantly, thoroughly documented.