A Tolkien Compass

A Tolkien Compass, a 1975 collection of essays edited by Jared Lobdell, was one of the first books of Tolkien scholarship to be published; it was written without sight of The Silmarillion, posthumously published in 1977. Some of the essays have remained at the centre of such scholarship. Most were written by academics for fan-organised conferences. The collection was also the first place where Tolkien's own "Guide to the names in The Lord of the Rings" became widely available.

A Tolkien Compass
Cover of first edition,
designed by Lester Adams
EditorJared Lobdell
Authorsee text
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectTolkien studies
GenreScholarly essays
PublisherOpen Court
Publication date
1975
Media typePrint (paperback)
Pages201
ISBN0-87548-303-8
823/.912
LC ClassPR6039.O32 Z69 1975

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey described the essays as written in an innocent time before Tolkien studies became professionalised, and as such they offer "freshness, candor, and a sense of historical depth"[1] that cannot be repeated. Other scholars have stated that two of the essays about The Hobbit have become frequently-cited classics in their field.

Context
Further information: J. R. R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English Roman Catholic writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.[2]

The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954–55; it was awarded the International Fantasy Award in 1957. The publication of the Ace Books and Ballantine paperbacks in the United States helped it to become immensely popular with a new generation in the 1960s. It has remained so ever since, judged by both sales and reader surveys.[3] The literary establishment was largely hostile to the book, attacking it in numerous reviews.[4][5]

Contents


The first and second editions contain the following essays:

The first edition also contains:

The second edition also contains:

Publication history

A Tolkien Compass was published in paperback by Open Court in 1975. They brought out a second edition in 2003, adding a scholarly foreword by Tom Shippey.[1] The book has been translated into French, Swedish, and Turkish.[6]

Reception

Tom Shippey commented that A Tolkien Compass appeared "at a time when, in the United Kingdom at least, professing an interest in Tolkien was almost certain death for any hopeful candidate seeking entrance to a department of English".[1] The first edition included Tolkien's "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings"; Shippey called this "immensely valuable" and "deplored" the fact that the Tolkien Estate had demanded it be omitted from later editions. Shippey described the essays as written in the "Age of Innocence" before Tolkien studies became professionalised, and as such offering "freshness, candor, and a sense of historical depth" that cannot be repeated.[1] He noted that some of the early predictions, made before The Silmarillion appeared in 1977 or The History of The Lord of the Rings in 1988–1992, were wrong. For instance, Tolkien had not written much of The Lord of the Rings before the Second World War; but many other predictions have been substantiated, such as Richard C. West's account of Tolkien's use of medieval-style interlacing as a narrative structure.[1]

Janet Brennan Croft has written that West's essay "has proven to have particularly long-lasting impact".[7]

Gergely Nagy called the book "a significant early collection".[8]

David Bratman described the book as "the first commercially published collection of scholarship from the Tolkien fan community."[9] He commented that the essays were originally papers for conferences organised by fans, but were for the most part written by scholars, and that two of the chapters were seen by scholars as "classics in the field": Richard C. West's essay on "The Interlace Structure of The Lord of the Rings, and Bonniejean Christensen's on "Gollum's Character Transformations in The Hobbit".[9]

Jean MacIntyre, regretting that scholars have paid relatively little attention to The Hobbit compared to his other novels, notes that A Tolkien Compass takes the children's book seriously with two frequently-consulted essays, namely Matthews's psychological interpretation of The Hobbit (MacIntyre notes that Randel Helms had "mocked" this), and Christensen's account of Tolkien's revisions of The Hobbit as he updated Gollum's character.[10]

References
  1. Shippey, Tom (2003). "Foreword". A Tolkien Compass (Second ed.). Open Court. pp. vii–xi. ISBN 0-87548-303-8.
  2. Carpenter, Humphrey (1978) [1977]. J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. Unwin Paperbacks. pp. 111, 200, 266 and throughout. ISBN 978-0-04928-039-7.
  3. Seiler, Andy (16 December 2003). "'Rings' comes full circle". USA Today. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
  4. Lobdell, Jared (2013) [2007]. "Criticism of Tolkien, Twentieth Century". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 109–110. ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0.
  5. Shippey, Tom (2005) [1982]. The Road to Middle-Earth (Third ed.). HarperCollins. pp. 175, 201–203, 363–364. ISBN 978-0261102750.
  6. "A Tolkien Compass". WorldCat. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
  7. Croft, Janet Brennan (2021). "In Memoriam: Richard C. West". Mythlore. 39 (2). Article 23.
  8. Nagy, Gergely (2005). "The Road to Middle-earth, Revised and Expanded Edition (review)". Tolkien Studies. Project Muse. 2 (1): 258–261. doi:10.1353/tks.2005.0026. S2CID 170416664.
  9. Bratman, David (2006). "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2003". Tolkien Studies. Project Muse. 3 (1): 241–265. doi:10.1353/tks.2006.0008. S2CID 171212505.
  10. MacIntyre, Jean (1988). ""Time shall run back": Tolkien's The Hobbit". Children's Literature Association Quarterly. Project Muse. 13 (1): 12–17. doi:10.1353/chq.0.0500.
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