Brief Guide to J. R. R. Tolkien

by Nigel Cawthorne

A very readable companion, this Brief Guide includes everything J.R.R. Tolkien: a brief biography, a critical view of Tolkien and what the literati think of him, his profession as a linguist, how "Beowulf" and other works influenced him, how he invented the nomenclatures and languages for Middle-earth, and much more.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

278 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Nigel Cawthorne is an Anglo-American writer of fiction and non-fiction, and an editor. He has written more than 80 books on a wide range of subjects and has contributed to The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph Daily Mail and The New York Times. He has appeared on television and BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Many of Nigel Cawthorne's books are compilations of popular history, without footnotes, references or bibliographies. His own web site refers to a description of his home as a "book-writing factory" and says, "More than half my books were commissioned by publishers and packagers for a flat fee or for a for a reduced royalty".

One of his most notable works was Taking Back My Name, an autobiography of Ike Turner, with whom he spent a number of weeks working with him on, taking up residence in Turner's house. The book caused much controversy, resulting in court cases for three years following its release.

Cawthorne currently lives in Bloomsbury, London with his girlfriend and son, Colin (born 1982).

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reads a bit too much like an extended wikipedia article, but I did learn a lot about old JRR. 3

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot better than I thought I would.

It does what it says it does in the title.

If you have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and you want to know a bit more about the books and their author, and how they came to be written, then this is the book to read. It's not a book for Tolkien scholars, or for people who are studying the place of Tolkien's work in 20th century literature. It's an introduction, a brief guide, though its brevity runs to 278 pages. It has an index, a bibliography of books by and about Tolkien, but no journal articles.

Perhaps the best way to indicate what it contains is to list the Table of Contents.

Introduction: The man and the myth
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Hobbit
Journey to Middle-earth.
The Inklings
Major Works
Posthumous Publications
Living in Middle-earth
The inhabitants of Middle-earth
The Characters of Middle-earth
The Languages of Middle-earth
Filming Tolkien
Bibliography
Index

The one thing it doesn't have is maps, for those you must go to the books themselves.

Flaws? Yes there are some.

One, which is not the fault of the author or publisher, is that an undergraduate student of English literature who had one of Tolkien's major books as prescribed reading could easily get away with reading the plot summaries in this book rather than the works themselves.

The second fault, for which I do blame the author and publisher, is that there are numerous typographical and spelling errors, especially in the names of the characters. The author himself makes the point that Tolkien was

...scrupulous about names. They needed to make sense and have some reasonable derivation no matter how obscure. He was always critical of earlier fantasy writers, such as Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, who seemed to pick names at random. For Tolkien names had to be fashioned by sound linguistic rules.

In view of that the publishers could at least have tried a bit harder to get the spelling of the names right.

[Adam Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Besides the biography section of the book, a lot that is written is already known and of that there are countless errors in either name, place, or spelling. Overall, it was a good read with a lot of interesting things that I hadn’t read before.

[John Hardy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this to be pretty much a waste of time. Who needed a precis of LOTR? There were a few interesting bits about Tolkien, hence two stars.
Only a complete Tolkien novice should even think about picking this up.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Review to be posted soon. A good reference to JRR Tolkien's works and his literary career.*

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a decent companion to the novice Tolkien reader. It includes a brief history of his life, fairly detailed synopses of his major works (skip these if you don't want to be spoiled or if you already know the plots well), and brief summaries of the lands, peoples, characters, and languages he created. I wish this book included more detail on Tolkien's life. Also, when giving character summaries, some major characters were passed over.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting book on the life of JRR Tolkien, with insights into his background and how he came to write all of the LOTR and related books. I enjoyed the biographical information. He also summarized all of the books: I was a little surprised to find several small but definate errors in the plot summaries of the books [I have read the LOTR over 10 times, and the Silmarillion 8 times, so I'm not making this up or relying on simply watching the movies to make this statement.] Still, a very enjoyable read.

[Bethany Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book.

I really liked the briefness. There was more that I would have liked to have to know about the author and his works but it was a brief look at it all.

It was a nice look at the man who brought us Middle Earth and it is a good book for those like to know more about this author.

This is a nice addition to have for my Tolkien collection. It was a good read.