Despite my reliance on the good work of so many others, any errors in this index are strictly my own. But I encourage you to contact me if you spot something that needs to be changed or added.
Forthcoming (later):
- Geographic tags for many of the maps are incomplete.
- Thumbnail images for the various snapshots of the First Map need to be created, as do many of the last 100 or so TAI items.
Forthcoming (sooner or later):
- Unveiling of images. See Images for (a little) more information.
Forthcoming (sooner):
- Tag/filter pages for books will include an area for notes, so that odd-looking filter results (as with the new Pictures 2 showing only four items of artwork) will make sense.
- “Family” tags will be added for many items, when they belong to an informal grouping of artwork that wouldn’t normally have a single tag to unite it.
2020-06-13: Worlds Added John Garth’s beautiful new book, The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places That Inspired Middle-earth [UK: at Blackwell’s] [US:at Bookshop.org], which contains 15 lovely reproductions of previously published items.
2020-04-06: Small adjustments to the underlying HTML and CSS have brought much fresher, crisper-looking TAI pages. The page dedicated to “copyright” has for now been deleted: its content duplicated content from the footer of every TAI page.
Most important, the header and footer of each page have been completely redesigned and rewritten in order to integrate TAI into the new Tolkienists web site. TAI is still researched and published by Erik Mueller-Harder at Vermont Softworks, LLC, but it’s more logically hosted at the Tolkienists’s domain.
2019-10-27: Voyage Only one new item (belatedly!), but nevertheless another large update, including 126 listings added for the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s Tolkien: Voyage en Terre du Milieu exhibition and its exhibition catalogue [at Amazon.co.uk]. I understand that there is also a small-format book of reproductions, currently available only at the BnF gift shop; I’ll add this data as soon as practical.
In addition, I’ve added three publication entries for already-listed pieces of artwork reproduced in Jerry Brotton & Nick Millea’s Fifty Maps and the Stories They Tell [at Blackwell’s], a small companion publication for the Bodleian Library’s current Talking Maps exhibition. See TAI #49, TAI #130, and TAI #257. Those same three items and one more (TAI #128) are also reproduced in the exhibition catalogue for the exhibit, also called Talking Maps [at Blackwell’s]. TAI #130 and TAI #130 in particular are better quality reproductions than ever before available; they’ve only been reproduced previously in The Shaping of Middle-earth [at Blackwell’s]. See Fifty Maps and Talking Maps.
For a final addition, I’ve added new publication lines for TAI #1 and TAI #14, both of which were reproduced in last year’s excellent The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands [at Blackwell’s]. See Writer’s Map.
I’ve also made a beginning at implementing Jason Fisher’s excellent suggestion that each source book’s page include bibliographic information. There’s still some work to do on this front (there are more than 60 sources!), but it’s a good start.
The new item TAI #552 is the Allen & Unwin printed map of Middle-earth from 1954, annotated by Tolkien and Pauline Baynes as background for Baynes’s production of her 1969 poster map. Discovered by Blackwell’s in 2015, this copy of the map has been reproduced in both recent Bodleian volumes, and also in the new BnF book.
2018-08-17: I have entered the large quantity of new data generated by the Bodleian Libraries’s Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition and its two major publications, the eponymous Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth and the much smaller but still useful Tolkien Treasures. This gives us 69 new entries, for a total of 545 TAI listings!
2018-07-25: Added Tolkien Treasures entries for all relevant TAI items, including (but not limited to the following):
- For TAI #3, removed black ink tag.
- For TAI #6 and TAI #15, removed pencil tag.
- For TAI #22, removed black ink and blue ink tags.
- For TAI #26, removed red ink tag.
- For TAI #144, replaced Bodleian shelfmark MS. Tolkien S 11/2, fol. 1 with MS. Tolkien Drawings 104r.
- For TAI #168, removed black ink tag; replaced blue ink with blue pen tags; replaced pink ink with pink pen tags; replaced Bodleian shelfmark MS. Tolkien S 11/2, fol. 23r with MS. Tolkien Drawings 126r.
- For TAI #169, replaced Bodleian shelfmark MS. Tolkien S 11/2, fol. 24r with MS. Tolkien Drawings 127r.
- For TAI #178, replaced Bodleian shelfmark MSs. Tolkien S 11/2, fols. 15–16 with MS. Tolkien Drawings 118r.
- For TAI #186, replaced Bodleian shelfmark MS. Tolkien S 11/2, fol. 20r with MS. Tolkien Drawings 123r.
- For TAI #252, replaced black ink with blue ink tags.
- For TAI #354, added black ink, red ink, gold paint, pencil, and colored pencil tags.
- For TAI #419, replaced Bodleian shelfmark MSs. Tolkien S 11/2, fols. 15–16 with MSs. Tolkien Drawings 118r–19r.
- For TAI #422, replaced Bodleian shelfmark MS. Tolkien S 11/2, fol. 19r with MS. Tolkien Drawings 122r; removed blue pen tag.
- For TAI #423, replaced Bodleian shelfmark MS. Tolkien S 11/2, fol. 19v with MS. Tolkien Drawings 122v; removed blue pen tag.
- For TAI #443, replaced Bodleian shelfmark MS. Tolkien S 11/2, fol. 21r with MS. Tolkien Drawings 124r and MS. Tolkien Drawings 125r.
2018-07-19: Subject collections (stars, for example) were being sorted in an almost — but not quite — random order. They are now presented correctly in order by TAI number.
2018-07-17: A four-day visit to the Bodleian Library in Oxford let me check quite a bit of information. Today’s update incorporates all of that work, as well as a few other items that have come to my attention.
- Well over half the entries have had their (Bodleian or Marquette) library shelfmarks standardized; listing them all here would result in tedium for you, dear reader, as well as for the team of hedgehogs which builds this site.
- Added Bodleian Library shelfmarks for TAI #9, TAI #61, TAI #62, TAI #63, TAI #64, TAI #67, TAI #68, TAI #69, TAI #70, TAI #73, TAI #78, TAI #79, TAI #80, TAI #81, TAI #82, TAI #83, TAI #84, TAI #85, TAI #86, TAI #87, TAI #90, TAI #91, TAI #93, TAI #94, TAI #95, TAI #98, TAI #99, TAI #100, TAI #102, TAI #103, TAI #106, TAI #107, TAI #108, TAI #109, TAI #110, TAI #113, TAI #115, and TAI #118.
- Corrected Bodleian Library shelfmark for TAI #20. Added clarification re “final art.” Inverted publication anotations re “final art” and “published art.”
- For TAI #24, added request for clarification to publication entry for LR 1977 Calendar.
- Added annotation re inscription on verso of TAI #27.
- Corrected Bodleian Library shelfmarks for TAI #29, TAI #57, TAI #58, TAI #266, TAI #296, TAI #297, TAI #298, TAI #299, TAI #300, TAI #301, TAI #302, TAI #303, and TAI #304.
- Added annotations regarding the proper orientation of TAI #31, TAI #32, TAI #33, TAI #34, TAI #35, TAI #37, TAI #38, TAI #63, TAI #64, TAI #73, TAI #74, and TAI #99.
- For TAI #30, added annotations regarding heraldic device orientation. Changed title to refer to entire plaque; inverted publication annotations to match.
- Added inscriptions for TAI #31, TAI #34, TAI #37, TAI #61, TAI #67, TAI #69, TAI #70, TAI #73, TAI #74, TAI #93, TAI #94, TAI #102, TAI #103, TAI #207, TAI #222, TAI #229, and TAI #294.
- For TAI #36, added watercolour, deleted green ink from media tags; added annotations regarding heraldic device orientation. Changed title to refer to entire plaque; inverted publication annotations to match.
- For TAI #110, added title: Inziladûn: Númellótë (“Flower of the West”), per Unfinished Tales, p. 227 †13.
- Corrected title of artwork for TAI #123 and TAI #133; corrected their source title and page number for Invented Worlds.
- Added media to TAI #132
- Corrected source title and page number for Invented Worlds for TAI #134, TAI #150, TAI #151, TAI #179, TAI #180, TAI #181, and TAI #382.
- Added cross-reference links between TAI #136 and TAI #334.
- For TAI #141, corrected title from “Troll’s Hill” to “Trolls’ Hill.”
- Corrected title for TAI #149.
- Added friezes metadata tag to TAI #242.
- Added further publication data to TAI #449.
2018-06-09:
- Finally added Life and Legend. For items TAI #1, TAI #7, TAI #13, TAI #17, TAI #22, TAI #23, TAI #24, TAI #26, TAI #30, TAI #31, TAI #33, TAI #34, TAI #35, TAI #36, TAI #37, TAI #40, TAI #53, TAI #58, TAI #60, TAI #76, TAI #114, TAI #119, TAI #121, TAI #132, and TAI #140 (all of which appear in Life and Legend) this is very straightforward: there’s just one more entry in the item’s publication listing. For items TAI #213, TAI #214, TAI #220, TAI #266, TAI #269, TAI #310, TAI #317, and TAI #354 — this again proves the rule that TAI numbers will never change: had I indexed Life and Legend before publishing TAI, these entries would have come chronologically as #193 – #200. Again, however, there will be no renumbering! Perhaps of even greater interest: several items new to TAI were published in Life and Legend; these include items TAI #464 – TAI #480.
- A detail of TAI #11, colorized, was used as the front cover of a Czech book titled J.R.R. Tolkien: Básně. ht: Ellen Schousboe.
- TAI #16 had been listed as Art of the Hobbit fig. 22; this has been corrected to fig. 23. ht: Ellen Schousboe.
2018-05-17:
- Deleted note for TAI #55, which had erroneously stated that the view was actually to the east rather than the west
2018-04-23:
2017-09-12:
- For TAI #110, added title Inziladûn: Númellótë (“Flower of the West”, per Unfinished Tales, 227 †13.
- For TAI #124, added note re Christopher Tolkien’s description in The War of the Ring, p. 353.
- For TAI #418, added note re Christopher Tolkien’s description in The War of the Ring, pp. 296–7. Note C.T.’s caution re the map’s orientation, but see the compass rose in the upper left confirming its north-south orientation.
- For TAI #428, added note re Christopher Tolkien’s description in Sauron Defeated, p. 34, note 2.
2017-08-15:
- Adjusted URLs of all tags/filters, such that (in short) the trailing “
.html
” becomes simply a “/
” — and an optional one at that. Note that this will render invalid any bookmarks you may have made. I do not foresee further changes to the URL schema, so feel free to bookmark items you find useful. The canonical forms for individual TAI entries will never change. - Created a new tag set for contributors such as Marc Zender, for whose aid I have boundless gratitude.
- Added new book Tolkien Family Album, with entries for TAI #1, TAI #8, and TAI #22. ht: Marc Zender
- Added new book The Lord of the Rings (50th ann. ed.), with entries for TAI #56, TAI #57, and TAI #58. ht: Marc Zender
- Added new book Lord of the Rings (Croatian xlation), with entries for TAI #56, TAI #57, and TAI #58. ht: Marc Zender
- Added new book Drawings … from Marquette, with entries for TAI #123, TAI #133, TAI #134, TAI #150, TAI #151, TAI #179, TAI #180, TAI #181, and TAI #382. ht: Marc Zender
- Added new book Double Worlds/Creative Process, with entries for TAI #133, TAI #134, and TAI #382. ht: Marc Zender
- Added new book Tree, Leaf: Visual Image, with an entry for TAI #382. Note: This would move TAI #382 into a chronological position between TAI #39 and TAI #40. However, my promise that “the numbering will never change” holds: TAI #382 will remain TAI #382. ht: Marc Zender
- Created separate book source for Pictures 2 — that is, the second edition of Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien; switched figures 23 and 24 in the first edition, which I renamed Pictures 1. This affects TAI #25, TAI #56TAI #57, and TAI #58; this also affected some of the H&A numbers. As with The Annotated Hobbit, all entries for the first edition hold true for the second unless otherwise notated; therefore, very few entries exist for Pictures 2. ht: Marc Zender
- For all entries in Pictures 1 and the new Pictures 2, moved the catalogue/figure number from the page column to the figure column, and added a [bracketed] page number referring to the physical (but unnumbered) page in the book. ht: Marc Zender
- Deleted “monochrome” notation from The Annotated Hobbit for TAI #4; it’s black on white to start with.
- Added “2nd & later impressions” notation to Pictures for TAI #4. See also note to TAI #226.
- Added an entry for TAI #226 to Pictures, with an annotation that this was included only in the first impression, per Christopher Tolkien’s introductory note to Pictures 2
2017-08-10:
- “Errata” page has been relabelled “Updates.”
- Each TAI item has been given its own singular page; cross-references now link directly to that page. The canonical URL for each TAI is now invariably "https://tai.vermontsoftworks.com/tai/" followed by the TAI number and a slash; e.g., “https://tai.vermontsoftworks.com/tai/22/” for “Bilbo comes to the Huts of the Raft-elves.”