The Fall of Gondolin
The Lay of Beren and Lthien (verse)
The Children of Hrin
I am distressed (for myself) to be unable to find the 'Rings of Power', which with the 'Fall of Nmenor' is the link between the Silmarillion and the Hobbit world. But its essentials are included in Ch. II of The Lord of the Rings. That book would, of course, be easier to write, if the Silmarillion were published first!
I will bring you round some unique MSS. some time to-day.
Thank you for your remembrance in prayer.
Yrs sincerely
Ronald Tolkien.
116 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
[The artist Milein Cosman had been chosen to illustrate Farmer Giles of Ham, and the publishers had asked Tolkien for his opinion of some specimen drawings, which Miss Cosman had only provided after many delays.]
5 August 1948 I am not for myself much interested in the fashionableness of these drawings, or in their resemblance to Topolski or Ardizzone. I find their lack of resemblance to their text more marked. This is a definitely located story (one of its virtues if it has any): Oxfordshire and Bucks, with a brief excursion into Wales. The places in it are largely named, or fairly plainly indicated. There is no attempt by the illustrator to represent any of this. The incident of the dog and dragon occurs near Rollright, by the way, and though that is not plainly stated at least it clearly takes place in Oxfordshire.
The giant is passable though the artist is a poor drawer of trees. The dragon is absurd. Ridiculously coy, and quite incapable of performing any of the tasks laid on him by the author. I cannot help wondering why he should be so fatuously looking over his right shoulder SE when an obvious if sketchy dog is going off NW. In defiance of the fact that me dog happily did not come on the head end first, but turned his own tail as soon as he came on the dragon's. The Farmer, a large blusterer bigger than his fellows, is made to look like little Joad at the end of a third degree by railway officials. He would hardly have used as a cowshed the shambling hut at which the miller and parson are knocking. He was a prosperous yeoman or franklin.
I gather you do not share my sentiments. Well, if you think that illustrations of this sort, wholly out of keeping with the style or manner of the text, will do, or will for reasons of contemporary taste be an advantage, I am so far in your hands. But are you ever going to induce Miss C. to impart such finish as will not exhaust her or make her too unhappy in fact to finish the job? And when do you expect to get this book out?
117 From a letter to Hugh Brogan
31 October 1948 I managed to go into 'retreat' in the summer, and am happy to announce that I succeeded at last in bringing the 'Lord of the Rings' to a successful conclusion. Also, it has been read and approved by Rayner Unwin, who (the original reader of 'The Hobbit') has had time to grow up while the sequel has been made, and is now here at Trinity. I think there is a chance of it being published though it will be a massive book far too large to make any money for the publisher (let alone die author): it must run to 1200 pages. However length is no obstacle to those who like that kind of thing. If only term had not caught me on the hop again, I should have revised the whole it is astonishingly difficult to avoid mistakes and changes of name and all kinds of inconsistencies of detail in a long work, as critics forget, who have not tried to make one and sent it to the typists. I hope to do so soon, and can only say that as soon as I have a spare copy you shall have the loan of one, plus a good deal of explanatory matter, alphabets, history, calendars, and genealogies reserved for the real 'fans'. I hope this may be possible soon, so that you could have it during the Christmas holidays; but I cannot promise. This university business of earning one's living by teaching, delivering philological lectures, and daily attendance at 'boards' and other talk-meetings, interferes sadly with serious work.
118 To Hugh Brogan
[A note of Christmas greetings, not dated but possibly written at Christmas 1948. It is in a form of Angerthas or dwarf-runes close to that used m The Lord of the Rings but not identical, and in two versions of Fanorian script, the first using tehtar (marks above the consonants) to indicate vowels, the second with vowels represented by full letters. For a transcription, see p. 442].
119 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
28 February 1949 I have not time to type [Farmer Giles] again, and I don't think it is really necessary. I am finding the labour of typing a fair copy of the 'Lord of the Rings' v. great, and the alternative of having it professionally typed prohibitive in cost. .... I believe that after 25 years service I am shortly going to be granted a term of 'sabbatical' leave, partly on medical grounds. If so, I may really finish a few things.
120 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
[The services of Milein Cosman had now been dispensed with, and Pauline Baynes had been contracted to illustrate Farmer Giles of Ham.]
16 March 1949 Miss Baynes' pictures must have reached Merton on Saturday; but owing to various things I did not see them till yesterday. I merely write to say that I am pleased with them beyond even the expectations aroused by the first examples. They are more than illustrations, they are a collateral theme. I showed them to my friends whose polite comment was that they reduced my text to a commentary on the drawings.
121 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
[On the subject of a sequel to Farmer Giles of Ham.]
13 July 1949 As for further 'legends of the Little Kingdom' : I put a reference to one in the Foreword, in case they should ever come to anything, or a manuscript of the fragmentary legend should come to light. But Georgius and Suet remains only a sketch, and it is difficult now to recapture the spirit of the former days, when we used to beat the bounds of the L.K. in an ancient car. The 'children' now range from 20 to 32. But when I have at last got the 'Lord of the Rings', of which I have nearly completed a final fair copy, the released spring may do something.
122 To Naomi Mitchison
[Mrs Mitchison had written in praise of Farmer Giles of Ham, which was published in the autumn of 1949.]
18 December 1949 3 Manor Road, Oxford Dear Mrs Mitchison, It was extremely kind of you to write to me. .... As for 'Farmer Giles' it was I fear written very light-heartedly, originally of a 'no time' in which blunderbusses or anything might occur. Its slightly donnish touching up, as read to the Lovelace Soc., and as published, makes the Blunderbuss rather glaring - though not really worse than all mediaeval treatments of Arthurian matter. But it was too embedded to be changed, and some people find the anachronisms amusing. I myself could not forgo the quotation (so very Murrayesque) from the Oxford Dictionary. Greek Fire must have been more like a flammenwerfer: as used on their ships it seems to have been quite deadly. But in the Isle of Britain in archaeological fact there can have been nothing in the least like a fire-arm. But neither was there fourteenth century armour.
I find 'dragons' a fascinating product of imagination. But I don't think the Beowulf one is frightfully good. But the whole problem of the intrusion of the 'dragon' into northern imagination and its transformation there is one I do not know enough about. Fafnir in the late Norse versions of the Sigurd-story is better; and Smaug and his conversation obviously is in debt there.
I know Icelandic pretty well (as I should), and a little Welsh, but in spite of efforts I have always been rather heavily defeated by Old Irish, or indeed its modern descendants. The mix-up was politically and culturally great and complex - but it left very little linguistic trace on Icelandic, save in the borrowing of certain names notably Brian and Niai which became used in Iceland. On Irish the influence was more considerable. But in any case names that were at all similar in sound tended to be equated or confused. ....
I hope to give you soon two books, about which at least one criticism will be possible: that they are excessively long! One is a sequel to 'The Hobbit' which I have just finished after 12 years (intermittent) labour. I fear it is 3 times as long, not for children (though that does not mean wholly unsuitable), and rather grim in places. I think it is very much better (in a different way). The other is pure myth and legend of times already remote in Bilbo's days.
Thank you again for writing. I hope the reply is in places legible. With best wishes.
Yours sincerely,
J. R. R. Tolkien.
123 From a draft to Milton Waldman
[At about the time that he was finishing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien was introduced to Milton Waldman, an editor with the London publisher Collins. Waldman expressed great interest in the new book, and also in The Silmarillion, which Tolkien hoped would be published in conjunction with The Lord of the Rings. As Allen & Unwin had not accepted The Silmarillion when Tolkien offered it to them in 1937, he now believed that he should try to change his publisher; accordingly he showed Waldman those parts of The Silmarillion of which there were fair copies. Waldman said he would like to publish it if Tolkien would finish it. Tolkien then showed him The Lord of the Rings. Waldman was again enthusiastic, and offered to publish it providing Tolkien had 'no commitment either moral or legal to Allen & Unwin'. The reply that Tolkien sent cannot be traced, but what follows is pan of a draft for it.]
5 February 1950 I am sorry that the days have slipped by since I got your note. .... As soon as I had dumped the MS. [of The Lord of the Rings] on you, I felt bad about it: weighing down your holiday with a labour that only an author's egotism could have inflicted at such a time. And examining my conscience I had to confess that as one who has worked alone in a comer and only had the criticism of a few like-minded friends I was moved greatly by the desire to hear from a fresh mind whether my labour had any wider value, or was just a fruitless private hobby.
All the same I don't think that in fact I burdened you under false pretences. .... I believe myself to have no legal obligation to Allen and Unwin, since the clause in The Hobbit contract with regard to offering the next book seems to have been satisfied either (a) by their rejection of The Silmarillion or (b) by their eventual acceptance and publication of Farmer Giles. I should (as you note) be glad to leave them, as I have found them in various ways unsatisfactory. But I have friendly personal relations with Stanley (whom all the same I do not much like) and with his second son Rayner (whom I do like very much). It has always been supposed that I am writing a sequel to The Hobbit. Rayner has read most of The Lord of the Rings and likes it as a small boy he read the MS. of The Hobbit. Sir Stanley has long been aware that The Lord of the Rings has outgrown its function, and is not pleased since he sees no money in it for anyone (so he said); but he is anxious to see the final result all the same. If this constitutes a moral obligation then I have one: at least to explain the situation. Did I say something of all this in my letter of Dec. 13th? I certainly meant to. However, I certainly shall try to extricate myself, or at least the Silmarillion and all its kin, from the dilatory coils of A. and U. if I can in a friendly fashion if possible.
124 To Sir Stanley Unwin
[Allen & Unwin had passed on a reader's enquiry as to whether Tolkien had written an 'Authentic History of Faery'.]
24 February 1950 Merton College, Oxford Dear Unwin, I am, I fear, a most unsatisfactory person. I am at present 'on leave', and away off and on; though the effort to cope with a mass of literary and 'learned' debts, that my leave was supposed to assist, has proved too much for me, especially as I have been troubled with my throat and have felt often far from well.
But at any rate I should long ago have answered your query, handed on from Mr Selby. Though dated Jan. 31 st, it was in fact addressed to me on Dec. 31st.
I cannot imagine and have not discovered what Mr Selby was referring to. I have, of course, not written an 'Authentic history of Faery' (and should not in any case have chosen such a title); nor have I caused any prophecy or rumour of any such work to be circulated. I must suppose that Mr Selby associates me with 'Faery', and has attached my name to someone eise's work It seems hardly likely that he can have come across some literary chat (of which in any case I am ignorant) in which somebody has referred to my Silmarillion (long ago rejected, and shelved). The title is not particularly fitting, and the work has been read in MS. only by about five persons, counting two of my children and your reader.
That, however, brings me to a more important topic (to me at any rate). In one of your more recent letters you expressed a desire still to see the MS. of my proposed work. The Lord of the Rings, originally expected to be a sequel to The Hobbit. For eighteen months now I have been hoping for the day when I could call it finished. But it was not until after Christmas that this goal was reached at last. It is finished, if still partly unrevised, and is, I suppose, in a condition which a reader could read, if he did not wilt at the sight of it.
As the estimate for typing a fair copy was in the neighbourhood of 100 (which I have not to spare), I was obliged to do nearly all myself. And now I look at it, the magnitude of the disaster is apparent to me. My work has escaped from my control, and I have produced a monster: an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and very terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion. My estimate is that it contains, even without certain necessary adjuncts, about 600,000 words. One typist put it higher. I can see only too clearly how impracticable this is. But I am tired. It is off my chest, and I do not feel that I can do anything more about it, beyond a little revision of inaccuracies. Worse still: I feel that it is tied to the Silmarillion.
You may, perhaps, remember about that work, a long legendary of imaginary times in a 'high style', and full of Elves (of a sort). It was rejected on the advice of your reader many years ago. As far as my memory goes he allowed to it a kind of Celtic beauty intolerable to Anglo-Saxons in large doses. He was probably perfectly right and just. And you commented that it was a work to be drawn upon rather than published.
Unfortunately I am not an Anglo-Saxon and though shelved (until a year ago), the Silmarillion and all that has refused to be suppressed. It has bubbled up, infiltrated, and probably spoiled everything (that even remotely approached 'Faery') which I have tried to write since. It was kept out of Farmer Giles with an effort, but stopped the continuation. Its shadow was deep on the later pans of The Hobbit. It has captured The Lord of the Rings, so that that has become simply its continuation and completion, requiring the Silmarillion to be fully intelligible without a lot of references and explanations that clutter it in one or two places.
Ridiculous and tiresome as you may think me, I want to publish them both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings in conjunction or in connexion. 'I want to' it would be wiser to say 'I should like to', since a little packet of, say, a million words, of matter set out in extenso that Anglo-Saxons (or the English-speaking public) can only endure in moderation, is not very likely to see the light, even if paper were available at will.
All the same that is what I should like. Or I will let it all be. I cannot contemplate any drastic re-writing or compression. Of course being a writer I should like to see my words printed; but there they are. For me the chief thing is that I feel that the whole matter is now 'exorcized', and rides me no more. I can turn now to other things, such as perhaps the Little Kingdom of the Wormings, or to quite other matters and stories.
I am sorry that this letter is so long, and so full of myself. I am not really filled with any overweening conceit of my absurd private hobbies. But you have been very patient expecting during the long years a sequel to The Hobbit, to fit a similar audience; though I know that you are aware that I have been going off the rails. I owe you some kind of explanation.
You will let me know what you think. You can have all this mountain of stuff, if you wish. It will take a reader who really reads a long time, I fear; though he may make up his mind with a sample. But I shall not have any just grievance (nor shall I be dreadfully surprised) if you decline so obviously unprofitable a proposition; and ask me to hurry up and submit some more reasonable book as soon as I can.
Yours sincerely