Celebrate every day of 2015 with this gorgeous full-color official Tolkien calendar that captures the excitement of J. R. R. Tolkien’s beloved classic The Lord of the Rings.
Illustrated by some of the most renowned Tolkien artists, the Tolkien Calendar has been an annual tradition for fans worldwide for more than 40 years. With the success of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, these classic works have become more popular than ever before.
The Tolkien Calendar 2015 features beautiful and collectible full-color artwork from artist Mary Fairburn that brings to life scenes from The Lord of the Rings. The official Tolkien Calendar 2015 includes 12 lush paintings, one for each month.
Size Closed: approx 12" x 12" (30×30cm)
Size Opened: approx 12" x 24" (30×60cm)
The artwork for The Lord of the Rings by Mary
Fairburn
By tolkienlibrary.com
In May 1968 Tolkien was sent a number of samples of illustrations for The
Lord of the Rings by a thirty-five-year-old woman writing from Winchester, Mary
Fairburn. The first response to Mary Fairburn was a typewritten letter in which
Tolkien told her that he thought the pictures were “splendid. They are better
pictures in themselves and also show far more attention to the text than any
that have yet been submitted to me”. She had sent at least three pictures,
including a pen-and-ink illustration of Gandalf on the tower of Orthanc, and
“a little sketch of Gollum”. Tolkien continues, “After seeing your
specimens I am beginning to . . . think that an illustrated edition might be a
good thing”. This is particularly significant. He did not simply like Miss
Fairburn’s pictures: he liked them as illustrations of the book. This in
contrast to the art of Cor Blok who Tolkien said were “most attractive, though
bad as illustrations”.
Mary Fairburn’s surviving Middle-earth illustrations have for forty years hung on the walls of a friend’s house in Derbyshire, to whom they were given after her hopes of a major commission as a book illustrator had been disappointed…It is clear that Tolkien saw Gandalf on Orthanc, the Gollum sketch (now lost), Galadriel and the Inn at Bree. We can not be sure he saw the others, but the artist believes he did. Despite Tolkien's ethusiasm for her illustrations, the illustrated edition of The Lord of the Rings, was never produced. In 1976, the artist moved to Victoria, Australia, where she currently lives, and works as an artist and musician.
About J.R.R Tolkien
JRR Tolkien (1892–1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specializing in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously “The Hobbit” (1937) and “The Lord of the Rings” (1954–1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth.