Middle-earth

Library

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

A collection of verse, framed as a manuscript of Middle-earth songs and legends found in the Red Book.

Supplementary writingsFrom posthumously published works, notes, drafts or appendices.
Author
J.R.R. Tolkien
Published
1962
Format
Collection

Synopsis

This is a slim book of verse, framed by a scholarly preface that imagines the poems as Shire tradition collected in the Red Book. The title poem recounts Bombadil’s comic encounters with the river-daughter Goldberry, an alder-man, a badger and a barrow-wight; other poems include “Oliphaunt”, “Errantry”, “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late” and “The Sea-bell”. It is not a novel and does not advance the war of the Ring, but it deepens the world by showing what ordinary Middle-earth people sang and believed. Some of the poems — Errantry above all — echo into the larger legendarium.

Setting

Mostly the Shire and its borders, presented as fragments of the Red Book of Westmarch, with a few pieces reaching into legend and dream.

Themes

  • song as memory
  • the comic and the eerie side by side
  • folklore within a fictional frame
  • the texture of ordinary life

Where to go next

Publication note

Publication note

Published in 1962 with illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Several poems had appeared earlier in magazines, and “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late” and “The Stone Troll” appear in The Lord of the Rings as songs.

Sources

  • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil · 1962

    A collection of verse, some of it framing Middle-earth legend.