Annoying Amateurs

[Bêthberry]

This is a rather tardy reply to Nynnd1's comment:

I have been looking for a copy of the Tom Bombadil book for ages but havent found one, and bombadil is my favourite character. is it worth tracking down or should i wait for a copy to find me.

Lyta has kindly given a source in The Tolkien Reader but "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" can also be found in the volume of faery tales, Tales from the Perilous Realm, a Harper Collins paperback, ISBN 0 261 10343 1. I rather like the cover, with its reverse chiaroscuro of black background with white shaded figures from the tales (a bit like my avatar, if I might with modesty point that out). I am fond of reading the stories in this collection because it highlights Tolkien's very good, to my mind, lecture "On Fairy-Stories."

The selection on Tom is really a collection of verse rather than prose story, but they all belong to the realm of faery. For your information, a blurb on the back of the book from The Listener calls TAoTB "Something close to genius."