Cilli - Tolkiens Library: an Annotated Checklist

Tolkiens Library

An Annotated Checklist

Oronzo Cilli

Foreword

Tom Shippey

Text Copyright 2019 Oronzo Cilli

Cover Illustration 2019 Jay Johnstone

First published by Luna Press Publishing, Edinburgh, 2019

Tolkiens Library: An Annotated Checklist 2019. 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: 978-1-911143-68-0

To Christopher and Priscilla Tolkien,

from the depth of my heart, for everything,

for every single day of these past forty years

spent in sharing your father with us.

Acknowledgements

This present work is the result of research which started in 2015. It grew in the process of writing as numerous suggestions were kindly given to me by friends and scholars whom I can but only respectfully thank.

First of all, though, I should thank you, my reader friend, not simply out of courtesy, but for dedicating your time to my work and for trusting me enough to follow this reconstruction of mine.

If the present book started with a simple search, it soon became something more, in the first place, because of John Garth, who first believed in its purpose and to whom I am thankful for his friendship.

With all my heart, I would also like to thank all the people who were so kind as to share information, and pictures, related to Tolkiens books: Mahd Brecq, Pieter Collier, Ryszard Derdziski, Jeremy Edmonds, Eduardo Ferreira, Bradford Lee Eden, Wim Meeuws (Thorntons Bookshop) and Elena Rossi. I feel the same gratitude to friends who own some of them in their private collections: Christina Scull, Wayne G. Hammond, Aaron OBrien, Charles Styles, Claudio Testi, Alan Reynolds and Carl F. Hostetter. 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.

I owe special thanks to Douglas A. Anderson, Pieter Collier, Dimitra Fimi, Jason Fisher, Peter Gilliver, Wayne G. Hammond, John Garth, Carl F. Hostetter, Jeremy H. Marshall, Neil Holford and Christina Scull, who kindly read most of this book in typescript and gave me valuable advice and words of encouragement.

Im deeply grateful to the highly knowledgeable staff of many libraries and archives, because I would not have had the opportunity to mention many books in my list if I had not received the invaluable lists of volumes preserved by them. I would particularly like to thank: Colin Harris, former Superintendent, Special Collections Reading Rooms, the Department of Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford; Judith Priestman, Curator, Modern Literary Manuscript Collections, Bodleian Library; Jocelyn English, Deputy Librarian, English Faculty Library; Sandra Nisin, Pour les fonds patrimoniaux, Bibliothque ALPHA, Universit de Lige; Alan Vaughan Hughes, Head of Special Collections and Archives and Alison Harvey, Archivist, Cardiff University; Aaron M. Lisec, Research Specialist, Special Collections Research Center Morris Library Southern Illinois University; Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien Archivist at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, for sending me information on books consulted by Tolkien at the Bodleian and for allowing me to study the Tolkien manuscripts preserved in the Weston Library in June 2018. Also, Julia Walworth, Fellow Librarian at the Merton College, Oxford, for availability and kindness; Penelope Baker, College Archivist at the Exeter College (Archives and Special Collections), Oxford, for sending me information on books consulted by Tolkien at Exeter College when he studied there (1911-1915), books which were listed by John Garth during his research, leading to the excellent works Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (2003) and Tolkien at Exeter College: How an Oxford Undergraduate Created Middle-earth (2014).

I cannot forget Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond with their monumental and indispensable work J.R.R. Tolkien: Companion & Guide (HarperCollins 2017, 3 vols). And to Jason Fisher, for allowing me to read an excerpt from his unpublished and not quite finished paper, The J.R.R. Tolkien Collection in the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives at Texas A&M University.

This present work has also been enriched by precious suggestions from my friend, and Tolkien scholar, Giovanni Carmine Costabile, especially concerning Medieval Studies related to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ; Giovanni has been thoroughly researching the influence of the Middle English romance on Tolkien for quite a while. I owe a lot to Giovanni, with whom I shared many facets of my research, as much as he shared his own with me. In fact, he helped me by making available some of the information gathered in June 2018 throughout his consultation of Tolkiens unpublished manuscripts related to the Gawain-Poet, at Weston Library in Oxford. In this research, in fact, he had collected precious information about circa a hundred books which Tolkien had consulted, many of which had never previously been included in the list.

For my work becoming a book in its own right, I owe this to Francesca Barbini and Tom Shippey. Francesca was immediately enthusiastic about this project, and warm-heartedly welcomed me into the wonderful Luna Press family. Tom was the one who read what was then but a disorganised draft and assured me that it should absolutely be published. It was September 2016 and, since then, the great scholar, whom I have always viewed as my role-model in Tolkien Studies, has always been by my side with suggestions and advice to motivate me and substantially contribute to the shaping of my work, improving it. I hope I deserve Toms kind words in his invaluable Foreword .

I would like to thank the friends who listened to my reflections on this work and, even if they could not yet read it at the time, appreciated the very idea of it: Enrico Introini, Gabriele Marconi, Dario Saderi, Giuseppe Scattolini, Gianluca Comastri, and Guglielmo Spirito O.F.M. To my wife Filomena, who supported me through various moments of doubt and uncertainty, and to my little children, Nicola and Raffaella. I hope that one day they will, by reading this book, understand my love for the Oxford Professor and the reason for so many hours spent in my studio among notes, books, and scattered papers.

I am also deeply grateful to the Tolkien Estate for their kind permission to quote from Tolkiens published works. Special thanks are due to Cathleen Blackburn, legal representative of the Tolkien Estate, for her reading of my work, for her support and her replies to my queries.

A special thanks to Priscilla, Professor Tolkiens daughter, for her words of encouragement and for the unexpected and moving gift that was sent to me a few days before this work was finished: the book Pageant of the Popes (1943) by John Farrow, was a gift from her father, and features her name written on its pages in his own handwriting.