Tolkien's Library: An Annotated Checklist by Oronzo Cilli (review)

An accurate and complete list of sources owned or used by Tolkien is something I have long desired to possess or consult (or even, in ambitious moments, to collate myself), and would be absolutely invaluable for Tolkien source studies. Oronzo Cilli has attempted to gather, from every source possible, information about books (and selected articles, essays, and other material) that Tolkien is known to have "read, consulted, bought or borrowed" (xxiii). A laudable goal indeed.

The bulk of the book is the section called "Tolkien's Library." It's a bit hard to get a firm grasp on what this really means, though, as the criteria for inclusion are described differently at different points in the introductory material. Initially, as I said above, this section is described as books that Tolkien "read, consulted, bought or borrowed." One interesting category is the inclusion of books Tolkien is known to have borrowed from the library at Exeter College, the Oxford college he attended from October 1911 through June 1915—from the days when borrowing records were not automatically expunged upon return of a book out of a concern for user privacy (so as a librarian, I feel a twinge of guilt by association that this data, which would now be considered privileged patron information, has been published). Similarly, the set or recommended books for exams Tolkien took also help us understand phases of his development as a student and scholar.

It is very useful indeed to have in one place annotations telling us of items which can be confirmed as signed by Tolkien, inscribed by him as gifts to his children, annotated by him, given to him, sold from his collection, now in private hands or special collections, or donated by him to a library. But this does not necessarily mean Tolkien used and was familiar with the content of all of these books. When Cilli further describes the items he includes in the category "Primary sources," he includes not just "books [Tolkien] is known to have owned [or] borrowed from libraries" but also books that are "cited in his writings"—including texts which he "simply was aware of" (xxiii). However, there's insufficient distinction made between, say, a primary source Tolkien engaged with closely and wrote about as a scholar, a contemporary novel he may merely have mentioned casually in a letter but not necessarily read himself (for example, Jacobine Napier Hichens's Noughts and Crosses [entry #983] or Edward Charles Carryl's The Walloping Window-Blind [#325]), or a few well-known lines of poetry he might have quoted from memory without necessarily having ever touched the book they appear in (like the lines he mis-quoted from Rupert Brooke's The Old Vicarage, Grantchester [#220]). Books Tolkien gave as gifts might also fall into this debatable category; I know from my own experience that I rarely read in their entirety books that I give as gifts, even if I inscribe them, so putting something like Hillaire Belloc's The Crisis of Our Civilization, a gift to Michael Tolkien (#116), into this primary source category may give the impression that Tolkien read it when we have no verification that he did. And how many purchased but unread books do each of us have on our shelves? Even books one borrows from a library don't always get read before they are due.

Then there is the question of editions. In many places Cilli cites specific editions for items where all we have is a passing mention from Tolkien. Consider the entry for Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company (#474), first published in serial and book form in 1891. Cilli lists a specific 1895 edition. Tolkien mentions the title in a letter—he obtained a copy for the Mexican boys he was accompanying as a tutor in Europe in 1913—but no other details. WorldCat lists at least seven firms in London alone which...