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| I am asked about reading order more than about anything else, usually by a parent whose child has just seen a paperback of The Fellowship of the Ring in a store window. Here is the order I would give anyone, with the dates the books first appeared in England. |
| I. |
The Hobbit (1937) Start here, at any age from about eight. It was written for his own children and it reads that way: a narrator who talks to you, a lighter touch, dwarves who sing about washing dishes. Tolkien revised one chapter for the 1951 edition, the one where Bilbo meets Gollum, so that it would match the larger story he was by then writing. Any edition you find today has the revised version. |
| II. |
The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring (July 1954), The Two Towers (November 1954), The Return of the King (October 1955). Not a trilogy, whatever the covers say. It is one long novel, published in three volumes because paper was dear after the war and the publishers were nervous. Read it straight through. Two pieces of advice for a first reading: the Prologue about hobbits and pipe-weed may be skimmed and returned to later, and when you finish the last chapter, don't stop. The Appendices hold some of the best things in the book, the tale of Aragorn and Arwen above all. |
| III. |
The Silmarillion (1977) The old history of the Elves, from the making of the world to the end of the First Age. Tolkien worked on it all his life and never finished it; his son Christopher assembled and edited it after his death. It reads like scripture or a chronicle, not a novel, and many readers give up in the first fifty pages. Read it the second time you come back to Middle-earth, not the first. The chapter on Beren and Lúthien is worth all the effort. |
| IV. |
Unfinished Tales (1980) More of what Christopher found in the papers. The pieces on the hunt for the Ring and on the wizards are fascinating for anyone who has read the big book twice. |
| V. |
The History of Middle-earth (twelve volumes, 1983–1996) Christopher Tolkien's great labor: the drafts and the rejected versions, all of it, edited and explained. For the devoted only. I am devoted. I have read all twelve, some twice, and I would not recommend them to my own children. |
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For the reader who wants the man Humphrey Carpenter's biography (1977) is the place to start, and The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), which Carpenter edited with Christopher Tolkien's help, is the book I would take to a desert island after the novel itself. And the smaller works, which are neglected and shouldn't be: Farmer Giles of Ham, Leaf by Niggle (I have never read it aloud to the end without my voice going), Smith of Wootton Major, The Father Christmas Letters, and new just last year, Roverandom, a story he told his boys about a little dog. For the scholar, there is his lecture on Beowulf from 1936, which changed how that poem is taught, and his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. |
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My own shelf • The Houghton Mifflin hardcovers, bought one at a time on a teacher's salary • The Ace paperbacks of 1965, which I bought in innocence before I learned they had been published without the author's permission. I keep them as a lesson. • The authorized Ballantine paperbacks that came out the same year, with Tolkien's own note on the back asking readers to buy only that edition. Worn to rags by three children. • The 1991 edition with Alan Lee's paintings, a gift from my wife on my retirement. Nobody under forty touches it without washing their hands. • The BBC radio version from 1981, on cassette, with Ian Holm as Frodo and Michael Hordern as Gandalf. The finest adaptation yet made, and I listen to it every winter on the drive to see our daughter. Want list: a first American edition of The Hobbit. I have seen the prices. It will remain on the want list. |