In which I offer some highly personal holiday gift suggestions
I’m usually reluctant to buy books as gifts for friends and family members. I’ve always thought of books as something personal, chosen after deep consideration at the bookstore or spontaneously when I see something on Amazon. (It also works the other way — spontaneously at the bookstore or after deep consideration at Amazon.) Exceptions exist: our oldest son loves reading Calvin & Hobbes collections; as a child, he saw the cartoon strip as a how-to manual. And a grandson specifically asked his parents for some Harry Potter books. I’m always ready to indulge a request for books in this age of screens.
If you have a poet in your life, or if you have a poet in your own heart, I have a few suggestions for holiday gifts. My perspective is personal; I would be thrilled to have received any of these as a gift. I’ll be writing about some of them here early next year.
My suggestions also reflect my Anglophilia.
I freely admit that I’m a Ringhead. I’ve read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings four times, and while I saw the movie version of The Hobbit only once, I watched The Lord of the Rings films four times — at the movie theater. I own the CDs; I would own the extended-version CDs, except my youngest son made off with them and pretends he bought them. I have an entire shelf (or two) of J.R.R. Tolkien-related books.
Late this past summer, I heard about the publication of Tolkien’s poems. On a trip to London in September, I saw the three-volume set, wisely displayed in a locked glass bookcase at Waterstone’s on Trafalgar Square. The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien is a three-volume set, so beautifully designed that they’re an artwork in themselves. I didn’t buy the set there; lugging extra weight home in my carryon wasn’t appealing (and it might have gotten lost in a checked bag!). But the day I was home, I ordered it.
The set, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, is organized chronologically. Volume I covers 1910 to 1919; Volume II holds 1919 to 1931; and Volume III is 1931 to 1967. Some of the poems are the familiar songs from his Middle-Earth saga; others I’d never run across, written when he was a very young man and not yet envisioning Middle-Earth. The set is not inexpensive (Amazon currently discounts it to about $88), but it is a marvel.
Related to Tolkien but much more affordable is The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien, edited by Richard Ovenden and Catherine McIlwaine. Christopher, who died in 2020 at the age of 95, was his father’s literary executor (and a late member of the Inklings in his own right). He published some 24 volumes of Tolkien’s work after his father’s death, including The Silmarillion. No one is more responsible for Tolkien’s reputation than Christopher, and these essays honor his memory.
T.S. Eliot is my favorite poet (I warned you my suggestions would be personal). Two years ago, Faber & Faber, Eliot’s publisher and employer, published a centenary edition of The Waste Land, which itself was a republication of a version from 1971. The subtitle tells you why this edition is different: “a facsimile & transcript of the original drafts including the annotations of Ezra Pound, edited by Valerie Eliot.” Reading this book is opening a page of one of the most significant chapters in the history of modern poetry.
For the occasional return to childhood, few things match The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading by Sam Leith, editor of The Spectator in Britain. He has produced more than a simple memoir of what he read as a child. Instead, he’s essentially created (or re-created) the literary canon of childhood along with a timeline of significant events that gave birth to the idea of books for children (it goes back further than I thought). The edition is also finely produced, including its own ribbon bookmark. It’s all about Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Treasure Island, Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Winnie-the-Pooh, Hans Christian Anderson, Narnia, and a host of other works.
It wouldn’t be Christmas as we know it without Charles Dickens. I happened across a one-volume set of his Christmas stories, appropriately entitled Dickens at Christmas. It was published by Vintage Classics in 2020, reprinting earlier editions. It includes Christmas stories first published in his magazines; an excerpt from The Pickwick Papers; and the Christmas books: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain. No bah humbug here.
Finally, I do have some non-British suggestions. During the past two years, I’ve spent considerable time reading the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which play a significant role in my recently published novel Brookhaven. I read several editions of his poetry, but the one I relied most heavily on was the 2000 edition published by Library of America. The hardback edition can be purchased directly from LOA; Amazon has only Kindle and paperback editions.
Reading Longfellow is reading some of the most significant poetry of 19th century America. He’s not much read or studied these days, but he should be. He helped shape American culture for 50 years; his poetry was widely read (and read aloud) well into the 1980s; he was also one of the most significant voices advocating the abolition of slavery. The 2020 biography Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Nicholas Basbanes is excellent.
The Library of America, by the way, is an absolute wonder for the fiction, poetry, and essays it’s kept in circulation. I have three volumes of writing by Wendell Berry that I love: The Port William Novels from the Civil War to World War II; The Port William Novels: The Postwar Years; and What I Stand On: The Collected Essays of Wendell Berry 1969-2017. The publisher also has an extensive American Poetry series, small volumes focusing on both historical and more contemporary poets.
Happy reading! And I wish you a most Merry Christmas and a poetical New Year!
Photo by Beige Alert, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.
How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”
—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
- A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
- World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025
- Czeslaw Milosz, 1946-1953: “Poet in the New World” - May 13, 2025
L.L. Barkat says
This totally gave me a last-minute gift idea. Thank you! 🙂
Bethany R. says
Enjoyed this, thank you! So fun to hear you talk about enjoying Tolkien too. 🙂 My husband, daughter, and I rewatched all three LOTR movies in the theater this year—such a blast, and still makes me teary. Oh, Sam! <3 I adore the books, and recently reread them, but I have to say—and this may be controversial—I prefer the movie's version of Aragorn to the books. I think it may be his even deeper reluctance to grab for glory or the crown. Thank you for leading me back to Middle Earth today, Glynn!
Bethany says
Also, I want to go check out the History of Childhood Reading book. Thanks for these helpful recommendations!
Bethany says
P.S. Just bought your new book, Brookhaven, and look forward to reading it!
Glynn says
Bethany, thank you so much! I hope you enjoy it!
Sandra Heska King says
Confession: I have the Ring set and the Hobbit, and I haven’t read them. I may have seen a Hobbit movie, but I don’t remember it. I think I need more Tolkien in my life. And, of course, every time I read what you’re reading, I want to read it, too.
Bethany says
Sandra, if you do want to try watching one of the movies, I would suggest starting with The Fellowship of the Ring–oh, that gorgeous Shire! The acting is fabulous, the New Zealand scenery perfect, and the music is enchanting. (Peter Jackson’s LOTR movies are what led me to reading the books. I had no interest before then.)
Glynn says
Sandra – what Bethany said. I think Peter Jackson did a marvelous job with filming the trilogy. He didn’t do as well with The Hobbit; he tried to make it a trilogy and there simply wasn’t enough there to do that and stay true to Tolkien’s story.