Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly With the release of The Fellowship of the Rings in movie theaters this December, Tolkien enthusiasts might consider Robert Foster's The Complete Guide to Middle-earth: From The Hobbit Through The Lord of the Rings and Beyond as essential to their viewing pleasure as popcorn. For anyone who's ever wondered "who's Beren?," "where's the Great Shelf?" or "what's the Council of Gondor?," this A-Z reference describes every person, locates every place and explains everything in Tolkien's saga. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc. About the Author Robert Foster is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers College. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he first encountered The Lord of the Rings during a summer in his early teens. Several years later he began tracing the etymology of names used in Tolkien’s works, a labor of love which eventually resulted in The Complete Guide to Middle-earth, a PhD in English and medieval studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and a scholarly career. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. With the appearance of The Silmarillion, the publication ofJ. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoesis is virtually complete. Thereader can now appreciate the full scope and significance of thehistory of Aman and Middle-earth, the central stages in the greatdrama of the Creation of Eae. One can trace in detail the Light ofAman from the Two Trees on Ezellohar to the renewing power ofthe Phial of Galadriel in the stinking darkness of Shelob's Lair.The terror felt there by Sam Gamgee is better understood afterreading of the Unlight of Ungoliant, and Boromir's desire for theRing can be seen as a wisp of the Shadow of Melkor, who lustedafter Light but created only Darkness. Not only do the great conflictsbetween East and West--from the First War and the Battle ofthe Powers to the Battle of Fornost and the War of the Ring--reveal the nature of good and evil and the immeasurable compassionof Iluvatar, but also, the identity of the forces that interveneto give victory to the good suggests the progressive freeing of Manfrom the influence of both Valar and demons to work out his owndestiny, known to Iluvatar alone.Writing this revised edition of my Guide to Middle-earth hasenhanced my awareness of these correspondences, designs whichare surely central to the joy of Faerie and which give ProfessorTolkien's work its marvelous and profound coherence. But it hasalso made me aware of the difference between the conception andthe realization of this cycle of myth and romance, between the'visionary scene' and its 'frame,' 1 between the Vision and the Text.The 'seamless web of Story' 2 is indeed endless and without blemish,but books--and lives--alas, are not. In the first edition of theGuide, I used any information available to me that I believed camefrom Professor Tolkien and had been transmitted accurately; Ihoped that these details would ultimately appear in print. Butnow--faced with a plethora of revised texts, calendars, letters, illustrations,interviews, anecdotes, and reports of conversations,some containing contradictory information--I have come to believethat inconsistencies, sometimes deliberately maintained byProfessor Tolkien, occur where the details of the Vision were notclear to him, where he was stymied by a single leaf on the Tree,not sure of 'its shape, and its sheen, and the glistening of dewdropson its edge,' 3 not yet ready to fix it in the Text. Yet these inconsistencies,which can bulk large in an alphabetic treatment of Faerie,should not be allowed to detract from the general bloom of thislushly foliated Tree.So this revised Guide is limited to the Text, to published worksby Professor Tolkien in the latest editions available to Americanreaders. The basic text for The Lord of the Rings is again the Ballantinepaperback edition, with emendations from the revisedHoughton Mifflin hardback edition; Appendix C contains a concordancebetween the two editions. British editions contain severalfurther emendations, which I have not taken into account; ofthose I have heard of or seen, the most significant is the change ofd to dh in Galadrim and Caras Galadon, which resolves the confusion(encouraged, it seems, by the Elves themselves, as ChristopherTolkien's comment in The Silmarillion on Galadhriel suggests)between Sindarin galad 'light' and galadh 'tree.' The three exceptionsto this rule of Text are sources which seem particularly trustworthy:the Pauline Baynes map of Middle-earth displays a numberof place-names evidently given her by Professor Tolkien; ClydeKilby's intimate Tolkien and the Silmarillion contains intriguing hintsof the End; so much of the information contained in ProfessorTolkien's letters to and conversations with my friend Dick Plotzhas been corroborated by The Silmarillion that I feel confident inusing other items.In general, I hope that I have not forgotten the limits of a referencework. I count myself fortunate to have wandered in theFairy-realm of Arda for fifteen years now, and while my tongue iscertainly not tied, for the sake of my own delight I have learnednot 'to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut andthe keys be lost.' 4 This Guide is intended to be supplementary tothe works of Professor Tolkien and no more; its value is that it canclarify deep-hidden historical facts and draw together scraps of informationwhose relation is easily overlooked, thus aiding thewanderer in Arda in his quest for its particular Truth. When mattersare unclear in the Text I have tried to remain silent, but thoseplaces where I have been unable to restrain my conjectures are liberallysprinkled with 'perhaps', 'presumably', and such words. Bynow the entries which comprise this Guide represent the productof ten years of intermittent labor and frequent correction by myselfand careful readers, until I can hope that the errors which remainare more mechanical than substantive.There is one major deviation from this conservative treatmentof the Text. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, whose Appendix B providesprecise dates for the events of the Second and Third Ages,The Silmarillion contains little exact chronological informationaside from sporadic indications of the passage of years ('But whenTuor had lived thus in solitude as an outlaw for four years') andrough dating from the first rising of the Sun. Desiring to make theinformation concerning the First Age more compatible with thatfor later Ages, I have taken it upon myself to coordinate theseindications of time into a Chronology of the First Age (AppendixA). This Chronology may help to unify in the minds of read-ersthe episodic sequence of events and personages in the Wars ofBeleriand; by counting years, it also underscores the rapid collapseof Beleriand after Dagor Bragollach and the tragedies of the earlydeaths of Huor (at 31), Turin and Nienor (36 and 27), and Dior(about 39). In addition, I must confess to having succumbed to thescholarly joys of writing an Appendix. The dates given for theFirst Age, therefore, both in the entries and in Appendix A, arestrictly my own and should be taken as approximations rather thanas completely trustworthy deductions; my derivation of thesedates is fully explained in the Appendix.The principles involved in determining entries are fairlysimple. In general, any capitalized word or phrase receives a separateentry unless it is a clearly identified epithet or a translation ofa name not used independently of the main name; thus there is anentry for Sulimo but not for its full translation, Lord of the Breath ofArda, and Voronwe as the epithet of Steward Mardil is not listedseparately. In addition, certain noncapitalized items (mostly thenames of species and objects, such as the great spiders and ithildin)have been included. Variant spellings (which in most cases reflectProfessor Tolkien's further development of the Eldarin languages)are noted, but most variations in the use of accent marks havebeen ignored. Page references in main entries are to significant referencesonly; cross-references usually cite the first occurrenceonly. Geographical entries do not always cite the maps on whichthe place in question is shown, and historical entries occasionallyuse dates given in Appendix B without citation; in both cases thereferences can easily be found. References to the various Indicesare given only when they contain new information.When entries are genuine forms in Middle-earth languages, Ihave indicated this, giving translations wherever I am sure ofthem. A question mark following a language identification ortranslation obviously indicates uncertainty. Translated Rohirric(Old English) forms are occasionally translated again into modernEnglish; the language of other forms is indicated as 'tr.--' whereverI felt there was a possibility of confusing them with Elvish orgenuine Mannish forms. However, by and large I have not indicatedthe language of names and terms 'Anglicized' into English,Germanic, or Celtic equivalents; as Appendix F of The Return ofthe King suggests, most Adunaic, Rohirric, Westron, Mannish, andHobbitish forms have been so translated. In The Lord of the Rings Ihave assumed that English versions of Middle-earth names (e.g.,Treebeard for Fangorn) represent Westron forms used by Men andHobbits. But in The Silmarillion this is obviously not the case, sinceWestron did not develop until the late Second Age. Here I haveassumed that the English versions, even though capitalized, aremerely translations intended for the convenience of the reader,not translated Mannish names. Read more