The Complete Guide to Middle-earth

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth
Complete Guide to Middle-earth Hildebrandt.jpg
Dust jacket of 1978 edition
AuthorRobert Foster
Cover artistThe Brothers Hildebrandt
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectTolkien's legendarium
GenreReference
PublisherBallantine Books
Publication date
1978
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages573 pp
ISBN0-345-44976-2 (2001 edition)
OCLC48541956
Preceded byA Guide to Middle-earth, Mirage Press, 1971 

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth: from The Hobbit to The Silmarillion is a reference book for the fictional universe called Middle-earth of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by Robert Foster. It was first published in 1971 under the title A Guide to Middle-earth. A revised and enlarged edition under the title The Complete Guide to Middle-earth was published in 1978. It received a third edition in 2001.

Author

Robert Foster (b. 1949, Brooklyn) earned a Ph.D. in English and Medieval Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and taught subsequently in the English Department at Rutgers University. Foster begun work on this in the late sixties, consulting Tolkien works and letters.

A Guide to Middle-earth (1971)

A Guide to Middle-earth
Guide to Middle-earth Kirk.jpg
Front of wrap-around dust jacket
AuthorRobert Foster
Cover artistTim Kirk
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectTolkien's legendarium
GenreReference
Published1971 (Mirage Press, Baltimore, Maryland)
Media typeHardcover and Paperback
Pages292
Followed byThe Complete Guide to Middle-earth (revised and expanded edition) 

A Guide to Middle-earth was the first published encyclopedic reference book for the fictional universe of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, compiled and edited by Robert Foster. The book was published in 1971 by Mirage Press, a specialist science fiction and fantasy publisher, in a limited edition of 2000 copies (750 numbered hardcovers and 1250 unnumbered paperbacks).[citation needed] A paperback edition was issued by Ballantine Books in 1974.

The author profile in the first edition describes Robert Foster as the then-"Tengwar Consultant" to the Tolkien Society of America.[citation needed] The book incorporates material previously published in the science fiction fanzine Niekas.

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth (1978)

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth is a major expansion of Foster's A Guide to Middle-earth, which was published in a limited edition by Mirage Press in 1971. Almost twice the length of the original (573 vs. 292 pages), the 1978 version incorporates extensive entries related to The Silmarillion (1977).[citation needed]

However, as it does not include information on post-Silmarillion material (i.e. Unfinished Tales and the series The History of Middle-earth), the 1978 edition contains some assertions contradicted by later publications. For example, the Star of Elendil jewel (Elendilmir) is identified with the Star of the Dúnedain given to Samwise Gamgee, but Christopher Tolkien refutes this. It also includes speculation on matters later confirmed in subsequent works. For example, Foster proposes that Gandalf and Olórin are one and the same – confirmed in Unfinished Tales.[citation needed]

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth (2001)

A further revised edition (ISBN 0-345-44976-2) was published in 2001, in time for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Reception

The Complete Guide to Middle-earth is widely recognised as an excellent reference book on Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien has commended it himself as an "admirable work of reference".

Lester del Rey praised the 1971 version for covering "literally everything you wanted to know about Middle Earth and were unable to discover before." Three decades later, in 2002, Charles W. Nelson also noted that the all revisions of the guides were very helpful for Tolkien students and enthusiasts, which each new edition being a noticeable improvement over the older ones in terms of comprehensiveness. While noting that the work still suffers from several minor inconsistencies, he praised most entries for being comprehensive, and the structure for being well organized, with useful indexes and appendices.

Translations

A Polish edition, Encyklopedia Śródziemia, was published in 1998, and received several reprints (2002, 2003 and 2012). A German edition, Das Große Mittelerde-Lexikon, revised and translated by Helmut W. Pesch [de], was published in 2002.


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