Love this collection and I will warn you that there is one more book that these two excellent historians put together that is not part of this set. It is called "The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion." and it is an entirely separate work from this set. Luckily “Steven B.” Put a comment about it and I was able to grab a copy!

Amazing quality collection. I would say that out of all the sort of “third party” Tolkien related materials and references, this is the absolute definitive collection. This is absolutely not to lessen the works and efforts of other Tolkien Scholars, but this collection is in my opinion, the most extensive and definitive.The effort it took to complete the chronology must have been extraordinary - and this amount of research is in my opinion, only rivaled by Christopher Tolkien’s work in The History of Middle-earth.Of the quality - very high. The binding is nice, the paper is good, everything is good. The dust jacket is a bit austere and not as flashy and exiting as other works of a similar nature, but I for one think it’s appropriate for a work taken as seriously as it is.I only have one criticism (and I will not say it’s a small one unfortunately) - the lack of page numbers in relation to subject matter within the table of contents is a big pain. Everything is of course, in alphabetic order, but each “article” is strangely not given a page number. With a work as large as this, and with so many entries this is a huge problem. The point of this work is to me, meant as a companion while reading Christopher Tolkien’s work or Tolkien biographies and essays - you read of a concept, work, text or even a person important in The Professors’s life and quickly open the pages of this companion and find an article to read more about. Unfortunately, I myself spend a lot of unnecessary time flipping the pages furiously trying to find the article, which sounds like a trifling thing, but really adds up to a lot of wasted time and a significant lack of convenience. Yet this does not in any major way prevent me from saying that this is indeed the single greatest and most definitive Tolkien reference set.For any serious amateur Tolkien Scholar, I would recommend this set over anything else I’ve owned - and I’ve owned a lot.

As a dedicated fan of Tolkien these books were a much appreciated addition to my collection.

I must preface this review with the fact that I have had very mixed experiences with buying books through amazon, the prices are usually very good but the books are sometimes not well packaged which can result in alot of damage. (Usually superficial I admit, though damage is damage regardless.)This set of books arrived in a slightly bigger box than necessary. However the books were well wrapped in plastic which protected even the vulnerable edges from damage.This actually suprised me in the best of ways, as it was shipped all the way from Poland to the U.S.The books themselves are of a very high quality, with nice thick pages, fine print, and a sturdy slipcase for the three of them that fits them just right! I started looking through the Chronology immediately and know without a doubt I will not regret purchasing this set from Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. They have quite alot of valuable insight on Tolkien, and after already having The Art of the Hobbit and The Art of the Lotr I look forward to reading these books as well for an even greater understanding and knowledge of my favorite 20th century author as well as the wonderful secondary world he created for us all to enjoy.

when combined with Christopher Tolkien's work, I cannot imagine there will be another work this thorough in documenting Tolkien's life and his ideas.