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J. R. R. Tolkien
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A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages Kindle Edition

by J. R. R. Tolkien (Author), Dimitra Fimi (Editor), Andrew Higgins (Editor) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 146 ratings
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First ever critical study of Tolkien’s little-known essay, which reveals how language invention shaped the creation of Middle-earth and beyond, to George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s linguistic invention was a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a home and peoples to speak them. As Tolkien puts it in ‘A Secret Vice’, ‘the making of language and mythology are related functions’.

In the 1930s, Tolkien composed and delivered two lectures, in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology. The second of these, the seminal Andrew Lang Lecture for 1938–9, ‘On Fairy-Stories’, which he delivered at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, is well known. But many years before, in 1931, Tolkien gave a talk to a literary society entitled ‘A Hobby for the Home’, where he unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art that he had both himself encountered and been involved with since his earliest childhood: ‘the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement’.

This talk would be edited by Christopher Tolkien for inclusion as ‘A Secret Vice’ in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays and serves as the principal exposition of Tolkien’s art of inventing languages. This new critical edition, which includes previously unpublished notes and drafts by Tolkien connected with the essay, including his ‘Essay on Phonetic Symbolism’, goes some way towards re-opening the debate on the importance of linguistic invention in Tolkien’s mythology and the role of imaginary languages in fantasy literature.

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  1. Print length
    189 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    HarperCollins
  5. Publication date
    7 April 2016
  6. File size
    2827 KB
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Product description

Review

‘Anyone who has interest in language, linguistics, storytelling, or simply just fantasy in general should add this to their top shelf’
5* Amazon Reviewer

‘An absolute MUST HAVE for any Tolkien fan!’
5* Amazon Reviewer

From the Inside Flap

This is an annotated edition of Tolkien's seminal 1930s essay 'A Secret Vice', in which he first revealed his 'vice' of inventing languages in his fantasy fiction.

Tolkien's linguistic invention was a fundamental part of his artistic output, to the extent that later on in life he attributed the existence of his mythology to the desire to give his languages a home and peoples to speak them. As Tolkien puts it in 'A Secret Vice', 'the making of language and mythology are related functions', in fact 'coeval and congenital'.

In the 1930s Tolkien composed and delivered two lectures in which he explored these two key elements of his sub-creative methodology. In 1931 he gave a talk to a philological society entitled 'A Hobby for the Home'. In this talk, later published as 'A Secret Vice', Tolkien unveiled for the first time to a listening public the art which he had both himself encountered and been involved with since his earliest childhood: 'the construction of imaginary languages in full or outline for amusement'. 'A Secret Vice' would be edited by Christopher Tolkien for inclusion in The Monsters and the Critics and serves as the principal exposition of Tolkien's art of inventing languages. But it has often been neglected by critics and this new critical edition will go some way towards re-opening the debate on the importance of linguistic invention in Tolkien's mythology and the role of imaginary languages in fantasy literature.

In addition to all previously unpublished notes and essays by Tolkien connected with the essay, the book discusses the subject of Tolkien's languages in the wider context of modern fantasy, including the Peter Jackson Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films and Game of Thrones.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B013CVFCVA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins; UK ed. edition (7 April 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2827 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 189 pages
  • Customer reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 146 ratings

About the authors

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  1. J. R. R. Tolkien

    J. R. R. Tolkien

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    J.R.R. Tolkien was born on 3rd January 1892. After serving in the First World War, he became best known for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, selling 150 million copies in more than 40 languages worldwide. Awarded the CBE and an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Oxford University, he died in 1973 at the age of 81.

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  2. Dimitra Fimi

    Dimitra Fimi

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    Dimitra Fimi is Professor in Fantasy and Children's Literature at the University of Glasgow, and Co-Director of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic.

    Her first monograph, Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies. She co-edited the first critical “extended” edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay “A Secret Vice”, in which Tolkien theorizes his language invention (A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages, HarperCollins, 2016). The book won the Tolkien Society Award for Best Book. Her latest monograph, Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies. She is also the co-editor of Sub-Creating Arda: World-building in J.R.R. Tolkien's Works, its Precursors, and Legacies (Walking Tree, 2019) and Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy (Bloomsbury, 2023).

    She has published widely in journals and edited collections. She contributes regularly to radio and TV programmes (BBC Radio 4, History Channel, BBC4). She is co-editing the Perspectives on Fantasy book series (Bloomsbury Academic), and has sat on the editorial boards of the Journal of Tolkien Research, the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, and the Literary Encyclopedia. She is also a member of the advisory boards of Walking Tree Publishers and the Routledge Imaginary Worlds book series. Many of her talks and articles are available online via her website: http://dimitrafimi.com/

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
146 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

Rodrigo Ramos
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 April 2018
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Great service! I recommend this book.
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GAIA ALBERTINELLI
4.0 out of 5 stars Nice
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 December 2020
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I'm overall satisfied with the book, though I would have preferred that, since it's a paperback and thus more delicate, it had had arrived wrapped in its cling; it would have protected it more. In fact it shows a small rip on the right side of the front cover and some light scratches all through the black coloured part of the cover.
Except that, it's in adequate conditions and it's really nice to look at. Looking forward to discovering if it's as captivating as its title!!
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Modern Viking
3.0 out of 5 stars For the Tolkien collector/completist only! **1/2
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 April 2016
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As something of a Tolkien completist (and most definitely a Tolkien enthusiast of the deepest dye), and as someone very interested in language, I was delighted to find that the notes for J.R.R. Tolkien's lecture 'A Secret Vice' have now been published in this comprehensive, unabridged edition. I pre-ordered the book without hesitation and plunged straight into it the moment it arrived. Quickly beginning to suspect that the editors' 55-page introduction (that it is longer than Tolkien's text is telling) is a superfluous regurgitation of what follows and consists largely of spoilers, I skipped it after 6 pages and moved on to the far shorter main course.

I still remember how taken I was by Tolkien's magnum opus The Lord of the Rings when first I persevered through it at the age of nine ('blown away' is the current, popular term). The unquenchable thirst it provoked in me led me to read countless other works of fantasy, especially aged 10-12 when my general attitude was that more is more. But even at such an early age it quickly became obvious that one of the factors placing Tolkien light-years ahead of his imitators (and, as I was to discover years later, contemporaries and predecessors) is his use of language, and especially his use of all manner of names that, though he may have invented them, 'pierced my linguistic heart' (as Tolkien writes about Welsh) as if they had been real, though cruelly severed from me in time and space.

This is where most other authors of fantasy fail, whether it be Raymond E. Feist (you can't take a protagonist seriously if his name is Pug), David Eddings (whose names are unpronounceable), Terry Goodkind (whose use of common modern names shatters suspension of disbelief) or George 'RR' Martin (who tweaked Goodkind's approach by changing the odd letter here and there -- it doesn't work), just to spontaneously name a few of Tolkien's best-selling successors. But the 31 pages of 'A Secret Vice', a sort of confession of Tolkien's life-long preoccupation of inventing languages for his own pleasure ('I may be like an opium-smoker seeking a moral or medical or artistic defence for his habit'), written as they were around 1931 when the talk was delivered, predate The Lord of the Rings by over 20 years. Yes, they certainly give an insight into some of the great man's earliest, embryonic thoughts on the topic, but, quite frankly, I am not altogether sure I needed to read them. Of course Tolkien was an exquisite stylist, so even here there are gems -- the following heavily-abridged fragment may be considered a taste:

'In ... invented languages the pleasure is more keen than ... in learning a new language ... because more personal and fresh, more open to experiment of trial and error... it is the _contemplation_ of the relation between sound and notion which is a main source of pleasure... It is then in the _refinement of the word-form_ that the next ... stage must consist. Most unfortunately above this ...stage the development tends to dive underground... Most ... addicts reach their maximum of linguistic playfulness, and their interest is swamped by greater ones, they take to poetry or prose or painting, or else it is overwhelmed by mere pastimes ... or crushed by cares and tasks. A few go on, but they become shy, ashamed of spending the precious commodity of time for their private pleasure... The obviously unrenumerative character of the hobby is against it -- it can earn no prizes, win no competitions ... make no birthday presents for aunts ... earn no scholarship, fellowship, or worship. It is also often -- like poetry -- contrary to conscience, and duty; its pursuit is snatched from hours due to self-advancement, or to bread, or to employers.'

Even more delightful and poignant is Tolkien's account of his all-too-brief encounter with a fellow language-inventor during World War I (too long to quote here, it can be found on pp. 6-8 of this edition). Tolkien's notes are then themselves followed by 25 pages of the editors' notes, and these are rather hit-and-miss. Meticulous though they can be to the point of absurdity (do we really need to have the expression 'let the cat out of the bag' explained to us?), the editors have also missed some rather obvious connections -- was not the name Nielikki (of a girl among the Valar) inspired by that of the Finnish goddess Mielikki? And what about 'kemen' (the Elvish word for 'earth, soil')? Surely Tolkien was aware that the people of Ancient Egypt called their country *Kemet ('Land of Black Earth')?

All of the above is followed by eight pages of Tolkien's fragmentary notes entitled 'Essay on Phonetic Symbolism' (+ nine pages of the editors' notes on Tolkien's notes), 24 pages of even more fragmentary notes by Tolkien (+ 11 pages of the editors' notes on Tolkien's notes), 16 pages of a rather superfluous article by the editors, superficially placing Tolkien's invented languages in a slightly broader context of invented languages, and a further 21 pages of sources/bibliographies, all of which leads me to ask: What next? A scholarly, meticulously annotated edition of Tolkien's dry-cleaning receipts and shopping-lists? It won't surprise me. I would, however, like to end this review with a wonderful quote (to be found towards the end of this volume) from the late Terry Pratchett:

'Tolkien appears in the fantasy universe in the same way that Mount Fuji appeared in old Japanese prints. Sometimes small, in the distance, and sometimes big and close-to, and sometimes not there at all, and that's because the artist is standing on Mount Fuji.'
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Rotta_XL
5.0 out of 5 stars Un infaltable
Reviewed in Mexico on 7 March 2021
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Para un aficionado, tanto al Legendarium del profesor por su construcción de mundo, como al estudio de los idiomas creados, idiomas reales o lingüística en general, no puede faltar en biblioteca. El único punto en contra sería con el mal cuidado (de la paquetería, el almacén o el manejo) que se nota en la sobrecubierta; llegó un poco rota en el doblez entre el lomo y la portada. Por lo demás, imprescindible.
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Sonia Calella
5.0 out of 5 stars Bisogna averlo se sei un appassionato
Reviewed in Italy on 20 February 2023
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Ottimo testo per gli amanti del genere e per chi si dedica a studi di linguistica. Consigliato!
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David Breerwood
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book with a great introduction.
Reviewed in the United States on 22 July 2019
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The introduction to the book does a nice job of setting one up to read the lecture. A Secret Vice is not Tolkien’s most popular work by far, but it is probably his most thought-out, intentional, and straightforward work in terms of what he was trying to convey.

Written almost as a documentary, the book begins with a lengthy explanation of what preceded Tolkien’s famous lecture(s), how Tolkien wrote, and some further notes for a wholistic background to guide the reader.

The actual lecture(s) is transcribed as well as one can based on Tolkien’s own lecture notes, modifications, and personal firsthand confirmation of how the lecture was delivered.

Anyone who has interest in language, linguistics, storytelling, or simply just fantasy in general should add this to their top shelf, as it could serve as a textbook into a multiplicity of creative arts. Great read!
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Autumn Storm
5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for any Tolkien fan!
Reviewed in the United States on 25 April 2020
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The book itself came in damaged. The top cover was torn terribly. I feel the warehouse could have been a little more careful with packing. But the book itself is an absolute MUST HAVE for any Tolkien fan!
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Nadia
5.0 out of 5 stars Da leggere
Reviewed in Italy on 8 May 2019
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Riedizione del bellissimo saggio tolkieniano, arricchita da un'introduzione competente e molto utile per aiutare il lettore ad inquadrare con correttezza e in profondità l'opera.
Molto specialistico, per certi versi, ma godibile anche per i profani e per gli appassionati.
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