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| The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien | |
|---|---|
| Publication Information | |
| Author | J.R.R. Tolkien |
| Editor | Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Released | 12 September 2024 (UK) 17 September 2024 (US) |
| Format | Hardcover boxed set |
| Pages | 1620 (540 each volume) |
| ISBN | 978-0008628826 |
| Preceded by | The Battle of Maldon: together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth (2023) |
| Followed by | The Bovadium Fragments: together with The Origin of Bovadium (2025) |
The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien is a three-volume book which collects most of the poetry that J.R.R. Tolkien is known to have ever written, published on 12 September, 2024. The editors are Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond.
The book contains "at least 240 discrete poems, depending on how one distinguishes titles and versions, presented in 195 entries and five appendices." Poems already published in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are not all included, but a selection was made. Longer poems that were previously published as separate books, such as The Fall of Arthur, are presented in extracts. At least 77 works included in the book had never been published before.[1]
From the publisher
World first publication of the collected poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, spanning almost seven decades of the author’s life and presented in an elegant three-volume hardback boxed set.
J.R.R. Tolkien aspired to be a poet in the first instance, and poetry was part of his creative life no less than his prose, his languages, and his art. Although Tolkien’s readers are aware that he wrote poetry, if only from verses in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, its extent is not well known, and its qualities are underappreciated. Within his larger works of fiction, poems help to establish character and place as well as further the story; as individual works, they delight with words and rhyme. They express his love of nature and the seasons, of landscape and music, and of words. They convey his humour and his sense of wonder.
The earliest work in this collection, written for his beloved, is dated to 1910, when Tolkien was eighteen. More poems would follow during his years at Oxford, some of them very elaborate and eccentric. Those he composed during the First World War, in which he served in France, tend to be concerned not with trenches and battle, but with life, loss, faith, and friendship, his longing for England, and the wife he left behind. Beginning in 1914, elements of his legendarium, ‘The Silmarillion’, began to appear, and the ‘Matter of Middle-earth’ would inspire much of Tolkien’s verse for the rest of his life.
Within The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien almost 200 works are presented across three volumes, including more than 60 that have never before been seen. The poems are deftly woven together with commentary and notes by world-renowned Tolkien scholars Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, placing them in the context of Tolkien’s life and literary accomplishments and creating a poetical biography that is a unique and revealing celebration of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Contents
See also
External links
- Addenda and Corrigenda to The Collected Poems
- The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien on Amazon
- Livestream chat with Christina and Wayne on Youtube
- "Ask me Anything" with Christina and Wayne on Reddit
- "The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien" 27 November 2024, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, accessed 18 July 2025
- Weblogs of Hammond & Scull
- Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, "Tolkien’s Collected Poems" 12 March 2024, Too Many Books and Never Enough, accessed 13 March 2024
- Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, "Tolkien’s Collected Poems Update" 21 April 2024, Too Many Books and Never Enough, accessed 9 May 2024
- Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, "‘Beyond Bilbo’" 24 August 2024, Too Many Books and Never Enough, accessed 25 August 2024
References
- ↑ Findegil, "The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien" 12 March 2024, Tolkien Collector's Guide, accessed 9 May 2024