Book Review: The Nature of Middle Earth: Late Writings on the Lands, Inhabitants, and Metaphysics of Middle Earth by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Carl Hostetter

The Nature of Middle Earth: Late Writings on the Lands, Inhabitants, and Metaphysics of Middle Earth
by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Carl Hostetter (823 Tol)

In the years following the publication of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien continued to explore and develop the concepts in his works, both published and unpublished. His son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, asked NASA programmer and amateur linguist Carl Hostetter to edit and prepare for publication a set of manuscripts that came out of these explorations. The result is this book that is alternately fascinating and difficult.

 

The difficulty partly comes from the nature of the material. Even though Tolkien’s texts presented here were mostly hand-written, many of them nonetheless had footnotes accompanying them. Hostetter also often uses footnotes of his own to mention details about the manuscripts, such as emendations Tolkien made on them. The result is that there are places where there are footnotes even within footnotes.

 

The content itself, though, will either be fascinating or unbearably abstruse, depending on the reader’s level of familiarity with Tolkien’s legendarium. Many of the manuscripts deal more with characters and themes in The Silmarillion than with those from The Lord of the Rings. In fact, an appreciation of this book will depend to a large extent on familiarity not only with those works, but also various posthumous books edited by Tolkien’s son Christopher: Unfinished Tales, the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth series, The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Gondolin.

 

About a third of the book is dedicated to Tolkien’s shifting conception of the relative rates of aging between humans and Elves. But some of the more intriguing texts are very brief (one or two pages). Here we see Tolkien’s thoughts on the Elves’ “mental communication,” whether or not Elves reincarnate, and which species have beards, and many other details. Many of these writings grew out of linguistic notes on the Elvish languages, and so this information is spread intermittently throughout the book as well.

 

Whether this book should be considered an essential read depends on what kind of approach you take to reading Tolkien. If you read Tolkien only for the adventure and your favorite characters, this book may not be for you. But if you are the kind of reader who analyzes the grammar of the Ring inscription, then yes, this book should be considered essential reading.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien: the Illustrated Encyclopaedia by David Day, The Atlas of Middle-Earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad or The History of The Hobbit (Parts 1 and 2) by John D. Rateliff.)

 

( Wikipedia entry on The Nature of Middle Earth )

 

Recommended by Peter J.
Virtual Services Department

 

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