I’m a fan of Tolkien, but I admit I did not begin this journey until the Lord of the Rings films started coming out. I had watched some Bakshi when I was younger, but it wasn’t as inspiring as the immersive experience Peter Jackson, et. al., taking over New Zealand to put together a much more appropriate epic than could have been envisioned by almost anyone else… maybe Jodorowsky…
Anyway, once the films started showing up I started reading the books, which at the time I thought consisted of 3 volumes: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. How wrong I was. The list of materials from Tolkien directly is fairly extensive, and most of it relates to Middle-earth. Most of it was published posthumously by his son, Christopher, who passed two years ago this month.
With the Amazon series coming up this year, and my semi-annual watching of the trilogies, it dawned on me to once again review my collection of Tolkien works. What’s been unusually difficult is trying to get a definitive timeline of these works in a chronological order of events and not publications. I suspect, but have not confirmed, this is because of the nature of much of these are in an unfinished state and/or may not have to have happened in a specific order. As an example, I think the Adventures of Tom Bombadil could have happened really anytime during the Silmarillion (after the world was created of course). I also moved the Letter of Tolkien to the bottom of the list as it covers multiple areas.
Ultimately, I located info from a couple of links:
Here we are. Items with an “X” I currently own (and will come back to update this page as I increase my collection), while the “O” is, you guessed it, remaining items to complete the collection.
The Collection
NOTE: HoMe = The History of Middle-earth, a multi-volume collection.
- X: The Silmarillion
- O: The Children of Húrin
- O: Beren and Lúthien
- O: The Fall of Gondolin
- X: The Book of Lost Tales I (HoMe I)
- X: The Book of Lost Tales II (HoMe II)
- X: The Lays of Beleriand (HoMe III)
- X: The Shaping of Middle-earth (HoMe IV)
- X: The Lost Road (HoMe V)
- X: The Return of the Shadow (HoMe VI)
- X: The Treason of Isengard (HoMe VII)
- X: The War of the Ring (HoMe VIII)
- X: Sauron Defeated (HoMe IX)
- X: Morgoth’s Ring (HoMe X)
- X: The War of the Jewels (HoMe XI)
- X: The Peoples of Middle-Earth (HoMe XII)
- X: Index (The History of Middle-earth XIII)
- X: The Hobbit
- X: The Fellowship of the Ring
- X: The Two Towers
- X: The Return of the King
- X: Unfinished Tales
- X: The Nature of Middle-earth
- O: The Letters of JRR Tolkien
- O: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
- O: The Road Goes Ever On
Toothless Philosophies 