Roverandom by J R R Tolkien edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G Hammond HarperCollins, $185 When I first read The Hobbit and its three-part sequel, The Lord of the Rings, in the late 1970s, these books were, well, just books: there was no introduction, not even an author's note.
That is not to say that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's work was not taken seriously. Though The Hobbit was published in 1937 as a children's tale - The Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers came out in 1954, Return of the King in 1955 - his fantasy had a firmer grip on his grown-up fans' imagination: 'Frodo Lives!' graffiti was reportedly painted on subway walls in the United States; closer to home, in Malaysia, I once saw an apple-green Volkswagen beetle pass, the name 'Bilbo' written in large, fancy purple script on its two doors.
But works published posthumously - Tolkien died in 1973 - began to feature an earnest introduction, and notes, explaining the whys and wherefores of the works' coming into being, the mythology that inspired them, and more.
Then there were the scholarly 'reference books', detailing the 'history' of Middle-Earth, by the youngest Tolkien son, Christopher.
Which brings us to Roverandom. It is treated with reverence, with a 14-page introduction giving the background to the creation of this children's story, and detailed notes explaining the meaning of certain episodes - or pointing out Tolkien's delightfully rich wordplay and the unexpected turns of phrases - and tying the story to incidents in the Tolkien family or events in Britain.
It all reads like an attempt by editors Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond to lift Roverandom to serious fiction, give it Hobbit-status. Yet children will probably not be bothered if they do not know how the tale evolved; ditto for most adults.
Roverandom first came into being in the summer of 1925, when Tolkien, his wife Edith, sons John (nearly eight), Michael (nearly five) and Christopher (not yet one) were holidaying at Filey, a town on the Yorkshire coast in northern England. Playing on the beach one day, Michael lost a beloved miniature toy dog, painted black and white.
