If you’re a Tolkien fan anywhere near New York, you must see the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibit now at the Morgan Library and Museum. On display until May 12, this is the largest exhibition of Tolkien’s work ever in the United States.

It’s overwhelming to see these works up close for the first time, especially if you’ve spent as much time as most Tolkien readers have looking at his beautiful illustrations and maps. The famous jacket of The Hobbit, for example, is on display, as well as the watercolors Tolkien painted for that book. There are also numerous maps of Middle-earth, family photos and letters, notes and diagrams of language, paintings and letters of Father Christmas that Tolkien sent to his young children, early sketches and paintings, and even the Oxford don’s commencement robes. There is so much in this mammoth exhibition that it is hard to take it…