Tom Shippey

Shippey in April 2015 (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Thomas Alan Shippey, Ph.D., or Tom Shippey (b. September 9, 1943), is a British author, philologist, and professor, and one of the foremost Tolkien scholars.

He has appeared in many documentaries on J.R.R. Tolkien, and is known for his lectures on Tolkien's legendarium and reviews of Tolkien-related literature, from the 1970's to the present.

Amazon Studios chose Shippey to be a consultant in the making of their TV series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, but he left the project in April 2020.

Biography

Born in Calcutta, India, Thomas Shippey had schooling in Scotland, where he acquired his accent. At age ten his parents transferred him to King Edward's School in Birmingham, England, where his literary interests began. He became an avid reader of fiction - introduced to Tolkien's writings around 1956 - and was newly engrossed in archaic European languages. In the popular tradition of the school, he also indulged in rugby.

Some years after finishing at King Edward's, Shippey was accepted into Queen's College, Cambridge and graduated in 1968 with a Bachelors and Masters of Arts. Since his undergraduate years he had been lecturing at the University of Birmingham, until 1972 - and upon a promotion in 1970 he began teaching Old and Middle English at St John's College, Oxford. Shippey first corresponded with Tolkien during this time, after Tolkien's personal secretary had attended Shippey's lecture, Tolkien as philologist, at Birmingham, and asked whether Tolkien might see the script. Shippey relayed the script, and Tolkien was in favor of it; two years later, the two met (at the behest of Norman Davis) at a social dinner. This stimulated Shippey's aspiration to follow Tolkien's footsteps in academia and promote his legacy.

In 1979, he began a career University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, joining its Chair of English Language and Medieval English Literature. Here his reputation as a published Tolkien scholar slowly grew, authoring his first major study The Road to Middle-earth in 1982, and first contributing essays to journals of different Tolkien Society branches. In 1993, Shippey transitioned to teaching at Saint Louis University, Missouri, becoming a Professor Emeritus and a part of the Walter J. Ong, Chair of Humanities.

He was president of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism for six years starting in 2003, and, until 2007, was also the editor of their annual publication, Studies in Medievalism. In 2008, he retired from his position at Saint Louis University.

For his expertise, Shippey was asked by the makers of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy to teach the cast how to pronounce Quenya and Sindarin words. He gladly participated in two of Michael Pellerin's documentaries (J.R.R. Tolkien - Origins of Middle-earth and J.R.R. Tolkien - Creator of Middle-earth) featured in the trilogy's Extended Edition. Much later, in 2018, he assisted in the forming of detailed teaser maps for Amazon Studios' upcoming series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, while also being selected to consult on the production itself, as revealed in July 2019. By April 15th, however, it was announced Shippey was no longer a consultant, for unspecified reasons.

With his wife and three children, Shippey resides in Dorset, South England.

Renown

Since 1982, Tom Shippey has been consistently mentioned or cited in works about Tolkien (once by Christopher Tolkien). He is regarded an authority on philological insights into Tolkien's world and its underpinnings.

For the publication of The Road to Middle-earth, Salon news remarked that "Shippey may be uniquely qualified to explicate Tolkien's worldview to the rest of us." For The Road to Middle-earth and J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Shippey received praise from Chicago Sun-Times, the Houston Chronicle, Harper's Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Washington Times, and the latter book won him the World Fantasy Convention's Special Professional Award in 2001. For these books he also recieved the award for Inkling Studies from the Mythopoeic Society, in 1984 and 2001.

In 2004, Douglas Anderson compiled a bibliography of Shippey's writings on Tolkien entitled "Tom Shippey on J.R.R. Tolkien: A Checklist". In the same year, TheOneRing.net awarded Shippey for "Best Tolkien-based Lecture Presented at an Academic Function" after his lecture History in Words, Tolkien's Ruling Passion given at Marquette University.

In 2014, Tolkien in the New Century: Essays in Honor of Tom Shippey was compiled by John Houghton, Janet Brennan Croft, Nancy Martsch, John D. Rateliff, and Robin Anne Reid.

John Garth has stated that reading The Road to Middle-earth "woke me up to why Tolkien works".

Books written

• Old English Verse (1972)
• Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (1977)
• The Road to Middle-earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien created a new mythology (1982 - several editions)
• J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2000)
• Roots and Branches: Selected papers on Tolkien (2007)

Essays et al.

Essays, forewords, or presented papers by Tom Shippey are found in works of secondary literature such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, Proceedings of the J.R.R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, The Ring Goes Ever On: Proceedings of the Tolkien 2005 Conference, "Something Has Gone Crack": New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War, A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings 1954-2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder, Myth and Magic: Art according to the Inklings, Tolkien's Library: An Annotated Checklist, J.R.R. Tolkien: The Forest and the City, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth, Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien, Tolkien and the Study of His Sources, and A Tolkien Compass, as well as volumes of Tolkien Studies.

Documentary appearances

• Tolkien Remembered (1984)
• J.R.R.T.: A Film Portrait of J.R.R. Tolkien (1996)
• An Awfully Big Adventure: J.R.R. Tolkien (1998)
• The Lord of the Rings film trilogy appendices (2001 - 2004)
  • Part One: From Book to Vision  >  J.R.R. Tolkien - Creator of Middle-earth
  • Part Three: The Journey Continues  >  J.R.R. Tolkien - Origins of Middle-earth
  • Part Five: The War of the Ring  >  J.R.R. Tolkien: The Legacy of Middle-earth & From Book to Script - Forging the Final Chapter
• National Geographic: Beyond the Movie - The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
• Tolkien & Lewis: Myth, Imagination & the Quest for Meaning (2017)

External links

• Tom Shippey at the Tolkien Collection
• Tom Shippey at Wikipedia
• Tom Shippey's profile at the Saint Louis University website
• Tom Shippey's profile at The Great Courses
• 2018 interview with the Prancing Pony Podcast
• Lecture on Tolkien's Beowulf translation on YouTube

See also

• Verlyn Flieger
• John Garth
• Michael D. C. Drout
• Patrick Curry
• Thomas Honegger