The primary purpose of this book is to collect together all the pictures (paintings, drawings, designs) by J. R. R. Tolkien which were published in a series of six Calendars from 1973 to 1979, with a gap in 1975.

(...) a collection of all the pictures from the Calendars necessarily constitutes a fairly complete record of my father's published work (since the majority of them first appeared in the Calendars, while the Calendars included almost everything that had been published previously - the chief exception being the illustrations of The Father Christmas Letters). I have therefore more nearly approached completeness by the inclusion of a few things that did not appear in the Calendars: the pen and ink drawing of Hobbiton, the Doors of Durin, Mirkwood, and the tree on the cover of the first paperback edition of Tree and Leaf. The illustrations of The Father Christmas Letters have not been repeated, with the exception of the 1928 picture of the Polar Bear fallen to the foot of the stairs in Father Christmas' house, which was used in the 1979 Calendar.