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Tolkien - the Illustrated Encyclopedia (Hardcover)

[ book review]

This book covers all the characters, places, objects, beasts and tribes of Tolkien's Middle Earth. It combines facts from all the books and is far more readable than The Silmarillion. One question that you might ask if whether there is much of a difference between this book and Day's other book which was published before this one, A Tolkien Bestiary. The encyclopaedia is newer, contains all the information from the Bestiary but also expands upon with many additional pictures. I think there may be some added text but from a quick comparison I didn't notice much difference in that regard.

There are many illustrations in this book, many by Tolkien himself, and I found it particularly nice to see how some of the places and things of Middle Earth look. I don't find that this detracts from the vision that I had in my head as I read the books. This book is all encompassing and covers almost anything you could ask about the Tolkien's universe, it is perhaps a bit scare on the invented languages but otherwise I can't think of any obvious deficiencies.

Among the illustrations are world maps which are always nice for reference and to compare with the maps in the other books. On top of this there are detailed family trees of key families as well as detailed figures of the universe's timeline. I wouldn't say this book is absolutely essential but it is certainly a nice reference to have.