The best books on Tolkien that will astonish you with his genius

A great place to start if you’re new to books on Tolkien (as opposed to books by Tolkien!). David Day has written many books on Tolkien and always offers intelligent and informed insights. Although The Hobbit Companion looks rather like a children’s book, it’s really more of a profusely-illustrated exploration of, as Day says, “the power of language,” looking at the derivations of all the key names in The Hobbit and what they reveal about Tolkien and Middle-Earth. It’s a fun and surprisingly rewarding read.   

Professor Tom Shippey is one of the great Tolkien scholars, with the gift of being able to offer deep insight and analysis in an accessible way. In The Road to Middle-Earth he uses Tolkien’s academic life and interests to shed light on the development of his personal mythology, from the foundational History of Middle-Earth works through to Lord of The Rings. For me this is a ‘gateway’ book—if you enjoy what Shippey has to say and what he reveals about Tolkien’s work, then I suspect you’ll also like the remaining three books on this list.   

This is a great example of what I enjoy about books about Tolkien. Roberts focuses on a tiny element of one of Tolkien’s works (the riddles that Gollum and Bilbo trade in The Hobbit) and uses it as a lens not only to investigate Tolkien’s own love and appreciation of riddles, but to prompt a wider exploration as to the nature and importance of riddles in wider literature, culture, and society. It’s well-written, intriguing, and like all great books on Tolkien, leaves you astonished.       

There’s a paradox at the heart of The Lord of The Rings. Tolkien wrote that it is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,” yet Middle-earth is pre-Christian and has little-to-no trace of religion evident within it. So how to reconcile the two? In The Battle for Middle-earth, Rutledge, a priest, brings his own knowledge and understanding of scripture to bear on The Lord of the Rings, to reveal how Tolkien’s plots, themes, and characters can be understood from a Catholic perspective. One thing shines clear from this book: just what a great storyteller Tolkien is. He never seeks to dictate or persuade (unlike C.S. Lewis in his Narnia series), but allows each reader to discover for themselves the treasures within his stories. 

This one’s for the hardcore Tolkien reader, but it’s a gem. It’s a collection of academic essays on The History of Middle-earth, (the foundational stories that lie behind Tolkien’s more popular works, some of which made it into The Silmarillion). Flieger and Hostetter are giants of Tolkien academia, and their individual works are well worth seeking out. The essays cover language, theme, structure, mythology, and other areas of literary criticism. As a writer, one in particular struck a chord with me: Hammond’s A Continuing and Evolving Creation. This explores how Tolkien actively worked on his vast mythology his entire life, revising, adding, and even re-conceiving elements as his understanding of his own work changed, and it offers a flavour of how one man could transform his experience, imagination, and beliefs into a personal mythology that has captured and enraptured so many readers.