TALES FROM THE PERILOUS REALM by JRR Tolkien
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ - Tolkien's wholesome, whimsical, heart-breaking, & hilarious collection of original "Fairy Stories", including his most autobiographical piece of writing & his lecture 'On Fairy Stories'…
“FAERIE is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold... The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.”
title: Tales from the Perilous Realm
author: JRR Tolkien
audiobook narrator: Derek Jacobi
published: 1997
publisher: HarperCollins
genre: fantasy stories & poems for children & adults
setting: our world, Middle-earth, & Faërie, & all the places in-between (the moon, the mer-kingdom, the Little Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom &c.)
main themes/subjects:
Roverandom: an enchanted toy dog, adventures, wizards & dragons, the Moon, the valley of Happy Dreams, seagulls & spiders, mythology, Uin the oldest of the Right Whales, kingdom of the mer-folk, English beachside town, family & childhood, industrialisation & environmental destruction
Farmer Giles: a comic medieval fable / children’s fantasy / mock charter myth / a local legend featuring a brave farmer & his cowardly dog & his determined mare, a comic & light-hearted narrative voice, mock etymologies of actual place-names, a silly giant, an inconvenienced dragon, a selfish king, a vindictive miller, a morose blacksmith, & a bunch of useless knights
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil: the Man in the Moon, elves, trolls, talking animals, spooky supernatural creatures (barrow-wights, mewlips, etc.), Tom Bombadil, fae English country & forest imagery, interesting meters & rhyme schemes, wandering, madness, shadows, water-worlds, embodied nature, comic animal fables, nursery tales, bestiary lore, nonsense rhymes, fairy poems
Smith of Wootton Major: village life, the magic of Faery, mid-winer festival, childhood, the imagination, respect for Faery, the relationship bw magic & cooking, inheritance by spirit rather than blood, travels & traveling, Fae in disguise among humans, beautiful descriptions of Faeryland, lots of thematic & motif echoes from The Lord of the Rings
Leaf By Niggle: dreams vs duties, anti-capitalism—how capitalism stifles creativity & demeans art, anti-industrialization, allegory for the artist, art & creativity, symbolism of the Tree / Forest / Mountains & painting / the Workhouses / the Voices / the shepherd, collaboration & inspiration, friendship & community, the tendency to introversion of the artist, death, gardening
On Fairy-Stories: the Perilous Realm = the Land of Faërie, fairy-tales, history of fairy-tales, fairy-tales vs myth / fantasy, history & language, on fantasy as “escapism”, Sub-creation, folklorists, Victorian fairy stories
CW // environmental destruction, some stressful situations with dogs, some stressful situations with female characters
“…fairy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves, but stories about Fairy, that is Faërie, the realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted… Most good ‘fairy-stories’ are about the aventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches.”
my thoughts:
I’d read all of these stories before but ages & ages ago, so to revisit them now, in my late-30’s, with a group of Tolkien lovers & readers as wonderful as the Fellowship of the Readers group (now the Deep Roots Bookclub) was the perfect end to two years of deep-diving into the Professor’s greatest tales.
There is so much to love on their own in these tales from flights (literally) of fancy (also, literally) to wholesome storylines, relatable characters, the themes of childhood & aging, grief & longing, creation & curiosity, friendship & love, & everything that makes the human experience so much more than can be explored merely in our “Primary World.”
In the Appendix, which contains Tolkien’s 1947 lecture, ‘On Fairy-Stories’, all the threads of the stories in his collection as well as the parts & pieces from his greater works from The Lord of the Rings to The Silmarillion & through all his Great Tales, we get more of his personal opinions, takes, & interpretations of the genre & history of “Fairy-Stories” as well as some extremely clever (& yes, sassy <3) rebuttals to claims re: things like fairies, fairy stories, the genre of fantasy, & even some of Tolkien’s own writing. It’s a bit dense but well worth the effort. (See more of my notes & annotations for this lecture below.)
For my full review for each story, click through their individual posts below:
ROVERANDOM by JRR Tolkien
“…off they sped along the moon's path that now stretched straight from the shore to the dark edge of nowhere. Rover did not know in the least where the moon's path led to, and at present he was much too frightened and excited to ask, and anyway he was beginning to get used to extraordinary things happening to him.”
FARMER GILES OF HAM by JRR Tolkien
“‘So knights are mythical!’ said the younger and less experienced dragons. ‘We always thought so.’
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM BOMBADIL by JRR Tolkien
“The Red Book contains a large number of verses. A few are included in the narrative of the Downfall of the Lord of the Rings, or in the attached stories and chronicles; many more are found on loose leaves, while some are written carelessly in margins and blank spaces.”
SMITH OF WOOTTON MAJOR by JRR Tolkien
“Then the dawn came, and far away he heard the dawn-song of the birds beginning, growing as it came towards him, until it rushed over him, filling all the land round the house, and passed on like a wave of music into the West, as the sun rose above the rim of the world.”
LEAF BY NIGGLE, by JRR Tolkien (1939)
“One day, Niggle stood a little way off from his picture and considered it with unusual attention and detachment. He could not make up his mind what he thought about it, and wished he had some friend who would tell him what to think. . .
“I read some of the stories in this volume for the first time just a few months ago, and regretted that I hadn't had it to hand when my children were expecting bedtime stories every evening.” — from Alan Lee’s Afterword
i would recommend this book to readers who appreciate whimsical, wholesome, hilarious, & heart-breaking stories from the Perilous Realm—especially readers with children (though these stories are just as rewarding for adults). this book is best read aloud, especially with children.
final note: If you have always been curious about Tolkien or are looking for a good reason to revisit his works, I highly recommend joining us (the Deep Roots Bookclub) for our slow re-read of The Silmarillion which starts this week!
“…for there is no true end to any fairy-tale… The verbal ending - usually held to be as typical of the end of fairy-stories as ‘once upon a time' is of the beginning - ‘and they lived happily ever after' is an artificial device. It does not deceive anybody. End-phrases of this kind are to be compared to the margins and frames of pictures, and are no more to be thought of as the real end of any particular fragment of the seamless Web of Story than the frame is of the visionary scene, or the casement of the Outer World.”
season: Autumn or Spring, also Midwinter
music pairing: English folk music
further reading:
LETTERS FROM FATHER CHRISTMAS by JRR Tolkien (1920-1945) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
THE HOBBIT by JRR Tolkien (1937) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
THE BOOK OF LOST TALES: Part I & Part II by JRR Tolkien
“Progress in Bimble Town”, poem by Tolkien (1931) in the Collected Poems
BEREN AND LÚTHIEN by JRR Tolkien (2017) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
BEOWULF translated by JRR Tolkien (1930s)
The Monsters and the Critics, 1936 lecture by JRR Tolkien (which is OOP apparently… ☹️)
THE SUMMER BOOK by Tove Jansson (1972) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
THORNHEDGE by T Kingfisher (2023) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“The Panther’s Tale” by Mahsuda Snaith in HAG: FORGOTTEN FOLKTALES RETOLD edited by Carolyne Larrington (2019) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“A Wilderness of Dragons”: Tolkien's Treatment of Dragons in Roverandom and Farmer Giles of Ham, by Romuald I. Lakowski (2015)
“The Joys of Latin and Christmas Feasts”: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham,
by Mateusz Stróżyński (2022)
The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think by Carolyne Larrington (2023)
Tolkien’s bookshelf—
PETER PAN by JM Barrie (1911)
THE SWORD IN THE STONE by TH White (1938)
JUST SO STORIES by Rudyard Kipling (1902)
Five Children and It (1902), The Story of the Amulet (1906) & The Dragon Tamers (1899), by Edith Nesbit
The Wind in the Willows (1908) & The Reluctant Dragon (1898), by Kenneth Grahame
The Garden behind the Moon by Howard Pyle (1895)
Sylvie and Bruno (1889-93) & Through the Looking Glass (1872) by Lewis Carroll
‘The Wax Doll’ by EH Knatchbull-Hugessen (1869)
‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ by Hans Christian Andersen (1838)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser (1590)
“Saint George and the Dragon”
various Norse & British mythology
The Norse Myths: A Guide to the Gods and Heroes by Carolyne Larrington (2017)
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (2017)
Arabian Nights (7th c. Baghdad—Abbasid; 14th c. Egypt—Mamluk)
Click on the star ratings beside the titles I’ve read to read my reviews/thoughts about the book.
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For more further reading suggestions re: everything Tolkien, check out this post:
Complete recs & TBR of works by & about JRR Tolkien
“The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet it is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: Small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”
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If you haven’t already, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to see more of my favorite quotes, expanded notes, & annotations from this book below. . .
My quotes, notes, & annotations for Roverandom, Farmer Giles, Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Wootton Major, & Leaf by Niggle can be found on their individual review pages. Below are my notes & annotations for Tolkien’s lecture: ‘On Fairy Stories’ included as an Appendix to his Tales.
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