Contents

Acknowledgements and abbreviations ix
Preface to the second edition xv

1 'lit. And lang.' 1
2 philological inquiries 26
3 the bourgeois burglar 51
4 a cartographic plot 87
5 interlacements and the ring 123
6 'when all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones' 159
7 visions and revisions 201
8 'on the cold hill's side' 241
9 'the course of actual composition' 255
afterword 291

Appendix a. Tolkien's sources: the true tradition 296
Appendix b. Four 'asterisk' poems 303
Notes 310
Index 324

English