About the Book

J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy story about the adventures of a bewitched toy dog, written before The Hobbit.

While on holiday in 1925, four-year-old Michael Tolkien lost his beloved toy dog on the beach at Filey in Yorkshire. To console him, his father, J.R.R.Tolkien, improvised a story about Rover, a real dog who is magically transformed into a toy and is forced to seek out the wizard who wronged him in order to be returned to normal.

This charming tale, peopled by a sand-sorcerer and a terrible dragon, by the king of the sea and the Man-in-the-Moon, was Tolkien’s first full-length children’s book, written before The Hobbit. Now, nearly 90 years later, the adventures of Rover – or, for reasons that become clear in the story, ‘Roverandom’ – are published in this delightful pocket hardback edition. Rich in wit and wordplay, Roverandom is edited and introduced by Tolkien experts Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, and includes Tolkien’s own delightful illustrations.

Critical Praise

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9780007523283
• ISBN 10: 0007523289
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• On Sale: 09/26/2013
• Pages: 192
• List Price:14.99 CAD
• BISAC1 : JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic
• BISAC2 : FICTION / Fantasy / Humorous
• BISAC3 : JUVENILE FICTION / Toys, Dolls & Puppets
• BISAC4 : FICTION / Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
• BISAC5 : FICTION / Fantasy / Dragons & Mythical Creatures

J. R. R. Tolkien

Biography

Humphrey Carpenter was born in Oxford in 1946. After reading English at Oxford, where Christopher Tolkien was one of his lecturers, he worked for some years for the BBC, and continued to broadcast after becoming a full-time writer in 1975. His biography of J.R.R. Tolkien was followed by The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and their friends, and his other biographies include those of Benjamin Britten, W.H. Auden, and Ezra Pound. He wrote for children, including the bestselling and televised Mr Majeika books and he wrote book and lyrics for a children’s musical based on The Hobbit, for an Oxford choir school where J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith then saw it performed. He compiled, with his wife Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature and followed that with Secret Gardens, a study of the golden age of children’s literature. He died in January 2005.

Other Works by J. R. R. Tolkien

• 

  The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded edition

  By J. R. R. Tolkien

• 

  Letters from Father Christmas

  By J. R. R. Tolkien

• 

  The Hobbit: Illustrated by the Author

  By J. R. R. Tolkien