John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa in 1892 and raised in England after his mother brought him home at age three. Orphaned before he was thirteen — his mother died a devout Catholic convert — Tolkien went on to study Old and Middle English, Germanic languages, Welsh, and Finnish at Oxford. He graduated in 1915, married Edith Bratt before shipping out to the Western Front, and fought in the Battle of the Somme. Nearly all of his closest friends were killed. He contrac...
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book
Synopsis
Presented as verses from the Red Book of Westmarch — the fictional Hobbit manuscript that also contains The Lord of the Rings — this slim collection gathers sixteen poems attributed to Hobbit and Elvish authors. Tom Bombadil himself appears in the title poem and its companion 'Bombadil Goes Boating,' navigating the Old Forest and the Withywindle in his characteristic boisterous style. The remaining poems range from riddles and songs to beast fables and astronomical lore, several reworked from earlier versions Tolkien published in magazines during the 1930s. The in-universe framing gives even slight verses a sense of cultural depth, as if the reader is glimpsing a much larger folk tradition that happens to sit just offstage in Middle-earth.
Vibe
Genres
Characters
Tom BombadilSupporting
The ancient, inscrutable master of the Old Forest whose songs bind the natural world and who exists entirely outside the Ring's power.
GoldberrySupporting
Tom's companion and the 'River's daughter,' whose presence in the poems evokes the beauty and mystery of the natural world.
Subjects
Places
Edition
No cover available
The adventures of Tom Bombadil and other verses from The red bookUnknown, 1962
63 pages
Allen & UnwinLanguage: English5 editions available
