The Lord of the Rings

The Library Essay

The Author Illustrated It All Along

J. R. R. Tolkien drew and painted throughout the long composition of The Lord of the Rings, maps, inscriptions, the doors of Moria, the towers and mountains of his invented west, but the artwork stayed mostly in archives while the book, published in three volumes in 1954 and 1955, went on to be read by generations in every language that has printing.

This 2021 HarperCollins edition unites the complete novel in one volume with the author's own illustrations reproduced in the text for the first time, together with his maps and workings. Seeing the drawings beside the prose settles an old question of tone; Tolkien's Middle-earth was always precise rather than vague, surveyed and dated like a real country, and his own pictures are the field notes.