Digital Tolkien Project

@digitaltolkien.com

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A scholarly project focused on Tolkien from a corpus linguistic and digital humanities perspective. Posts by James Tauber (@jtauber.com) https://digitaltolkien.com/

“The textual situation is in fact of fearful complexity…to present the detail in a printed book [is not] possible” The Return of the Shadow, p. 246 “to present the whole complex in this book is obviously impossible” The Return of the Shadow, p. 274 We’re working on it Christopher! home.digitaltolkien.com
beginnings of search results for "trotter" with P-text selected. Shows a total of 204 hits (all in The Return of the Shadow) with a aggregate by P-text, for example P11b "Arrival at Bree (b)" 10 hits.
Web page titled 06.01 A Long-expected Party visualizing where in the text the P-text is and then listing in a table: 06:P1 A Long-expected Party (First Version) p13–17 2,073 tokens 06:P2 A Long-expected Party (Second Version) p19–25 2,760 tokens 06:P3a A Long-expected Party (Third Version) (a) p28–30 710 tokens 06:P3b A Long-expected Party (Third Version) (b) p33–34 521 tokens 06:P4 A Long-expected Party (Fourth Version) p36–37 543 tokens
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Page for 10.1.01 Ainulindalë in Morgoth's Ring Subheading Text Types with a table Text Type Segments Tokens N 384 7,488 O 3 146 P 88 9,527 Q 111 1,132 R 1 14 S 18 178 T 78 642 U 22 491 Followed by a ribbon showing coloured bands corresponding to each type and their location in the chapter text.
Two slightly different covers of The Hobbit One is marked: First: 1 Last known: 15 Last possible: 16 The other is marked First possible: 16 First known: 17 Last known: 28 Last possible: 32
UNFINISHED TALES OF NÚMENOR & MIDDLE-EARTH
J.R.R. TOLKIEN Edited by CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN
"TOLKIEN" and "Silmarillion" in ITC Clearface Pro Heavy with the bar of the "E" and the tops of the "l" circled in red
Me holding up a 1979 Silmarillion paperback against my attempt to reconstruct using ITC Clearface Pro Heavy (and matching colours)
TOLKIEN
TOLKIEN The Fellowship of the Ring
TOLKIEN typed in a font viewer
The word TOLKIEN on a book cover
Family tree of Tolkien’s UK publishers books.digitaltolkien.com A downward family-tree diagram showing publisher boxes labeled with names and years connected by lines to indicate founding, mergers, and succession. Some boxes are highlighted to indicate the entity responsible for publishing Tolkien. Notable events include the 1989 merger of Harper & Row and William Collins & Sons to form HarperCollins, the merger of George Allen & Unwin and Bell & Hyman to form Unwin Hyman in 1986, and the acquisition of Unwin Hyman by HarperCollins in 1990.
bar chart titled Mentions of ‘Black Gate’ vs ‘Morannon’ by book of Lord of the Rings. Book 1: 0 vs 0 Book 2: 2 vs 0 Book 3: 0 vs 0 Book 4: 7 vs 7 Book 5: 9 vs 5 Book 6: 6 vs 1 Little Delving #0015 digitaltolkien.com
Screenshot showing two texts, one labeled T-text and the other P-text. Various segments of the former are colored yellow or red. Various segments of the latter are colored yellow or green.
search results for "my father" showing distinction between P-text and N-text
Screenshot showing timeline of Ainulindalë manuscripts and a graphical representation of their formats.
Screenshot of search results for 'iluvatar' organized by colour-coded text type. open to level 1 2 3 4 iluvatar 57 – P-text 47 (84.98) – The Book of Lost Tales I 47 (84.98) – P2 Link between Cottage of Lost Play and Music of Ainur 3 (15.86) P.01.P2.015 1 P.01.P2.016 1 P.01.P2.017 1 + P3 The Music of the Ainur 44 (120.88) – N-text 6 (21.9) – The Book of Lost Tales I 6 (21.9) – Chapter II: The Music of the Ainur 6 (22) N.01.02.048 2 N.01.02.090 1 N.01.02.099 3 – T-text 1 (28.65) – The Book of Lost Tales I 1 (28.65) – Chapter II: The Music of the Ainur 1 (28.65) T.01.02.090 1 – Q-text 3 (88.24) – The Book of Lost Tales I 3 (88.24) – Chapter II: The Music of the Ainur 3 (88.24) Q.01.02.104 3 relative frequency shown in parentheses is per 10k tokens
A hierarchical table initially splitting rows into: - Not Tolkien's words - Tolkien's words Not Tolkien's words is then split into: - Notes and Commentary by Christopher (given the designation N) - Other person's words (given the designation O) Tolkien's words are split into: - Legendarium - Unconnected writings, e.g. Letters Legendarium is split into: - Primary texts in larger font (given the designation P) - Small font Small font is split into: - Quotes of P-Text by Christopher (given the designation Q) - References to other texts, e.g. Published Silmarillion (given the designation R) - New / variant material New / variant material is split into - Secondary texts (given the designation S) - Text variants and fragments (given the designation T) Designations N thrugh U are colour-coded in a spectrum.
Screen shot of portion of web page reading: Part of Name Gimli Gloin’s son Gimli Glóin’s son Gimli son of Glóin Gimli the Dwarf Gimli the Dwarf Glóin’s son Gimli the dwarf Master Gimli Tags no-vxgl name-character namepart-character khuzdul-external foreign
James, in a black shirt and jacket and talking with his hands, presents on the Digital Tolkien Project. The slide shown is titled History of Middle-earth Typography.
Winner Tolkien Society Award for Best Online Content 2025 Digital Tolkien Project
Screenshot of a reading environment with the text of part of the Silmarillion on the left with names of places highlighted and a map showing those same places on the right.
A screenshot from Rimbë titled LR 1.04 (Scenes) CHARACTERS There is a table with a row for Frodo, Pippin, Sam, Black Rider, Farmer Maggot, Mrs Maggot, Merry. One column gives the number of paragraphs in which each appears. Another column gives the number of paragraphs in which each speaks. Then there is a chart with a stroke for each paragraph visualizing whether the character is there and whether they speak.
Thank you! 3K Followers
Círdan from Rings of Power looking out West towards Valinor but with James Tauber's face.
Meme from the Peter Jackson Hobbit films with two orcs and the words The Age of Twitter is over The Time of the Bluesky has come!
A paragraph from The Hobbit with a sentence on each line, verbs underlined, speech in grey, and named entities highlighted.
My Big Week in November 19th My Birthday 20th LOD of the Rings: Tolkien’s Sub-Creation as Linked Open Data Talk at International Conference on Linked Open Data and Literary Studies in Berlin 21th Launch of Tolkien Linked Open Data Project & 100th anniversary of birth of Christopher Tolkien 22nd Speaking on the Digital Tolkien Project Digital Humanities Training Day at FAU Erlangen 23th & 24th Christopher Tolkien Centenary Conference where I’ll be talking about continuing Christopher Tolkien’s work in a digital age
A ribbon of colours for each episode showing regions of varying hues, saturations, and lightness.
A ribbon of colours for each episode showing regions of varying hues, saturations, and lightness.
the "shape" of the Errantry poem laid out with rectangles representing each token, the width of the rectangle reflecting the number of characters in the token
Page titled "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" giving volume, number, and page for the Collect Poems, listing other poems in the set, and a visualization of the "shape" of the poem showing stanzas and lines and tokens as rectangles.
Tolkien Poetry webpage showing list of poems with an inbox box labeled "Filter by title" and option to sort by Collected Poems Order or Alphabetical Title Order. The nav bar has the options "Poems" and "Collections".
Screenshot of entry for the poem The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late giving location in the Collect Poems, other versions, appearance in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and a link to the Tolkien Gateway.
Timeline of Regions in The Rings of Power S1E3 showing the timecode ranges for each of the major regions that The Rings of Power is set in.
10 copies of The Book of Lost Tales Part Two: original UK edition, UK POD, original US edition, BCA edition, latest hardcover both UK and US, various UK paperback editions, and Del Rey paperback.
Timeline of Regions in The Rings of Power S1E1 showing the timecode ranges for each of the major regions that The Rings of Power is set in.
Bar chart titled "The Rings of Power: Number of words spoken per episode". The bars peak at S1E5 before a dramatic drop in S1E6 before returning to their normal levels by season end. The Rings of Power Wrap-up and Digital Tolkien Project
Always contracted Bilbo Sam Butterbur Bill Ferny named Orcs every other Hobbit Mixed (% contracted) Gollum 95.5% Merry 91.2% Tom Bombadil 80.0% Frodo 77.1% Pippin 72.7% Gandalf 20.4% Saruman* 20.0% Aragorn 12.0% Treebeard 7.4% Always uncontracted Every Elf Every Dwarf Every Gondorian Every Rohirrim
Shortest Paragraph in The Silmarillion “Who are you?” said Túrin. J.R.R. Tolkien, Silmarillion [S QS.21.055] Little Delving #0021 digitaltolkien.com
Shortest Paragraph in The Lord of the Rings “Nothing.” J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings [LR 4.10.054] Little Delving #0020 digitaltolkien.com
Shortest Paragraph in The Hobbit “Why?” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit [H 01.108] Little Delving #0019 digitaltolkien.com
“dark” versus “light” frequency per 10k tokens The Hobbit: dark 14.77 light 12.25 The Lord of the Rings: dark 15.35 light 11.4 The Silmarillion: dark 12.45 light 11.61 Little Delving #0018 digitaltolkien.com
Longest Paragraph in The Silmarillion For nigh on two years after the Dagor Bragollach the Noldor still defended the western pass about the sources of Sirion, for the power of Ulmo was in that water, and Minas Tirith withstood the Orcs. But at length, after the fall of Fingolfin, Sauron, greatest and most terrible of the servants of Morgoth, who in the Sindarin tongue was named Gorthaur, came against Orodreth, the warden of the tower upon Tol Sirion. Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power ... J.R.R. Tolkien, Silmarillion [S QS.18.016] Little Delving #0017 digitaltolkien.com
Distribution of Words Per Paragraph in The Silmarillion Histogram showing number of paragraphs with a given number of words. The longest paragraph is QS.18.016 with 481 words. Little Delving #0016 digitaltolkien.com
Mentions of ‘Black Gate’ vs ‘Morannon’ by book of Lord of the Rings Bar chart Book 1: Black Gate 0 ‘Morannon’ 0 Book 2: Black Gate 2 ‘Morannon’ 0 Book 3: Black Gate 0 ‘Morannon’ 0 Book 4: Black Gate 7 ‘Morannon’ 7 Book 5: Black Gate 9 ‘Morannon’ 5 Book 6: Black Gate 6 ‘Morannon’ 1 Little Delving #0015 digitaltolkien.com
Mentions of ‘precious’ by book of Lord of the Rings Bar chart Book 1: 12 times Book 2: 3 times Book 3: 11 times Book 4: 87 times Book 5: 1 time Book 6: 20 times Little Delving #0014 digitaltolkien.com
Longest Paragraph in The Lord of the Rings Strider sighed and paused before he spoke again. That is a song, he said, in the mode that is called ann-thennath among the Elves, but is hard to render in our Common Speech, and this is but a rough echo of it. ... J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings [LR 1.11.148] Little Delving #0013 digitaltolkien.com
Distribution of Words Per Paragraph in The Lord of the Rings Histogram showing number of paragraphs with a given number of words. The longest paragraph is 1.11.148 with 483 words. Little Delving #0012 digitaltolkien.com
“evil” versus “good” frequency per 10k tokens The Hobbit: evil 1.26 good 18.22 The Lord of the Rings: evil 5.2 good 9.4 The Silmarillion: evil 11.14 good 2.38 Little Delving #0011 digitaltolkien.com
Mentions of ‘Gollum’ vs ‘Sméagol’ by book of Lord of the Rings Bar chart Book 1: Gollum 30 Sméagol 8 Book 2: Gollum 23 Sméagol 1 Book 3: Gollum 4 Sméagol 0 Book 4: Gollum 308 Sméagol 141 Book 5: Gollum 2 Sméagol 0 Book 6: Gollum 18 Sméagol 2 Little Delving #0010 digitaltolkien.com
Chunks per Chapter in The Hobbit Bar chart with 19 bars, one for each chapter of The Hobbit. Little Delving #0009 digitaltolkien.com
“do not” versus “don’t” frequency per 10k tokens The Hobbit: do not 0.94, don’t 12.88 The Lord of the Rings: do not 9.25, don’t 8.83 The Silmarillion: do not 1.38, don’t 0 Little Delving #0008 digitaltolkien.com
Bar chart showing counts of Shire, Rohan, and Gondor for each book. Counts for Shire by book are 123, 47, 5, 12, 17, 54. Counts for Rohan by book are 0, 23, 74, 7, 70, 29. Counter for Gondor by book are 0, 32, 34, 43, 113, 38.