A comprehensive, illustrated guide to the history, lands, and inhabitants of Middle-earth.

The fantasy world of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth contains a rich assortment of people, cities, and creatures—as well as a deep, intertwined history that spans thousands of years. In this beautifully illustrated, leather-bound volume, best-selling author and Tolkien scholar David Day presents four decades of research and writing on the lands and inhabitants of Middle-earth. Sections of this A-to-Z dictionary are devoted to discussion of the battles, history, beasts, and heroes of Tolkien’s stories, and are accompanied by black-and-white illustrations. This comprehensive volume on Tolkien’s world also includes an appendix of three primary legends that served as sources for Tolkien’s creations—the Volsunga saga, the Nibelungenlied, and Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle—and more than 200 black-and-white illustrations.

This work is unofficial and is not authorized by the Tolkien Estate or HarperCollins Publishers.

David Day was born and raised in Victoria, B.C. He has lived in Britain, Greece, Spain and currently Toronto. He is poet and author of over forty books of poetry, ecology, history, natural history, fantasy, mythology, and fiction. He has also written for theatre, television, ballet, national and international newspapers and magazines. He has written a dozen books of natural history and ecology, including: The Doomsday Book of Animals (named a Time Magazine ‘Book of the Year’), The Whale War, Eco Wars, and most recently NEVERMORE: A Book of Hours. He has also writetn a book of ecology for children, Noah’s Choice: True Stories of Extinction and Survival. Although best known internationally for his best-selling books on fantasy and mythology, such as A Tolkien Bestiary, Castles, Tolkien’s Ring, The Hobbit Companion and Quest for King Arthur; David Day has also written ten children’s picture books, including: The Sleeper, The Swan Children, The Big Lie, Aska’s Animals, Tippu and The King of the Woods. His books – for both adults and children – have been translated into twenty languages. Eric Beddows is an artist and illustrator working in Stratford, Ontario. He has won numerous awards for his illustrations, including the Governor General's Award for The Rooster's Gift, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award for the Zoom books, and the International Ezra Jack Keats Award bronze medal. For The Emperor’s Panda, he won the IBBY International Books for Young People Illustrator’s Book of the Year (Canada) Award. Eric is currently writing and illustrating a trilogy of tales of the Northern Gothic to be entitled Thistledown Stories.

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