Dear Unwin,
the Hobbit will be ready tomorrow, honest.

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

Dear Unwin,
I've been swamped by illness, work, exams, more work, more exams, lectures, more work and more exams. I can't possibly get it ready this decade.

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

Dear Unwin,
did you like it?

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

Dear Unwin,
glad you liked it. The illustrations will be ready tomorrow.

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

...this decade, etc.

Dear Unwin,
I may have no taste but the American cover art is appalling and did they even read the book?

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

[Repeat all of the above w.r.t LoTR]

Dear [Inkling]
the other Inklings' work is mostly rubbish but I like it in parts and even though they are annoying I like them really.

Yours,

Tolkers.

[repeat with every other Inkling]

Dear [somebody acquainted with me]
that critic is impertinent and did he even read the book?

Yours, annoyed,

JRRT

Dear Christopher,
you are the only one who understands me! I love you! Sob!

Your
Father.
[Above written in Anglo-Saxon.]

Dear Nazi scum,
you, Apartheid supporters, Colonialists and other racist groups are all intellectually and morally defective. The Jews are a fine people and I would be proud to have Jewish ancestry but as far as I know I don't.

Yours with no respect at all.

Tolkien.

Dear [any translator of LoTR]
your translation is rubbish; why do you translate names that are not in English? Your translations are unnecessary and show a poor grasp of [your native language]. [Demonstrates a superior knowledge of the translator's language.] Here's a book I wrote about how to translate my book.

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

Dear {Member of public]
thank you for your interesting questions. Enclosed is a set of answers in obsessive detail that I worked out prior to my 5th birthday. It includes philological details unintelligible to any person lay in the subject.

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

Dear {Critic I like]
thank you for your encouraging, perceptive review.

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

Dear [prospective interviewer]
leave me alone.

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

Dear [Reader who said something stupid]
as any one with a modicum of understanding of [Old Ancient High Low North Western Indo-European Obscure Language], which is surely everybody, knows, you are completely wrong. Enclosed is a detailed explanation, incomprehensible to anyone lay in philology. And anyway it says you're wrong in the Appendices.

Yours faithfully,

Tolkien.

Dear Christopher,
the Roman Catholic Church is axiomatically right about everything even though most of its priests are idiotic, uneducated, corrupt, morally defective, politcally-minded perverts.

Your

Father.

----------------------------------------

That, if repeated many times over, is this book. It's interesting in parts and dull (because repetitive) in others. It shows a man jealously protective of his work, easily irritated (although by things that would probably wind up many an author) in search of an unmechanised rural idyll that never existed in the same way as Thomas Hardy. Enormously erudite, he struggled to understand why other people might find Anglo-Saxon difficult - a common problem with people of enormous talent in any intellectual discipline being the inability to conceive of it being anything but simple to grasp.

Worthwhile for anybody who wants to know more of what Tolkien the person was like.

This was a slog at times (I had to take a long break in the middle and read something else) but I found enough interesting hidden gems to be worthwhile. My biggest takeaway is that if I'd been alive at the same time as Tolkien, I would have been much too scared to ever write him a letter. Like 80% of these contain at least *some* measure of sass.

This new edition features a hundred and fifty newly-published letters, plus expansions to some letters previously included in the original edition: this is all excellent and most welcome. It should be noted, though, that these additions and expansions are selections that Humphrey Carpenter intended for inclusion in the original 1981 edition. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that, for good or for ill, this new edition remains shaped by Carpenter's original editorial emphases. That means a greater focus on behind-the-scenes looks at the composition and publication of Tolkien's works, especially The Lord of the Rings, and on Tolkien's theological and philosophical reflections on his writings. While finding these fascinating and invaluable, I personally would have liked to see the more "everyday" biographical materials augmented in this new edition — partly because I delight in entering into (or at least glimpsing) that world, and partly because some of Tolkien's best, wisest, most incisive and most humane reflections tend to emerge out of these. (Letter no. 55 is perhaps my favorite example.)

Not that the expanded edition is lacking in new letters of this kind: a tender letter to a son in his first year away from home at boarding school; another to a teenage son (also away at boarding school), delicately but pointedly telling him to never again forget to write to his mother on her birthday; a warm and encouraging letter to his dear friend and colleague E.V. Gordon; a letter detailing his trip to the cinema to see The Song of Bernadette and being unexpectedly deeply touched by it (as well as a subsequent letter in which Tolkien declares that the film, upon reflection, was not so good after all!; but that he nevertheless continues, days later, to be haunted and moved by the life and story of St. Bernadette herself).

All in all: an expanded edition of Tolkien's letters can't but be a welcome and excellent thing.

The one that stuck with me was to an actual Sam Gamgee.

I love Tolkien's work. I haven't read every single thing he's written, and can't get through all of the The Silmarillion without stopping from information fatigue, and yet I still find something very appealing about the worlds that he created in his literature. I'm fascinated by his love for language, etymology, and story.

This tome contains a wide selection of Tolkien's letters: to his children, to publishing companies, to fans, to colleagues. Some letters are short, with quick details about his life at that moment. Some letters (several of them drafts) are pages long, with explanations of the mythology of Middle Earth, etymology, or characters. Some of those letters are brilliant (and give me a renewed sense of hope that I will someday read The Silmarillion). Others are overly long and don't hold my attention.

If you manage to read the letters in order, they offer a unique perspective into some of the key relationships in Tolkien's life, including that with his son Christopher and Rayner Unwin, the publisher's son who gave his stamp of approval to The Hobbit as a child and later grew to be a publishing exec himself. Tolkien's letters to Christopher during WWII chronicle the drafting of The Lord of the Rings while Christopher is at war abroad. Tolkien's correspondence with Rayner Unwin evolves as both figures age.

I suppose the book is meant to be read in order, but there is an index conveniently included for those who want to focus on certain tomes in the Tolkien canon. Just be warned that some of Tolkien's views on specific topics change as time marches on. He was always a writer looking to edit and make changes.

Who should read this book: fans of all things Tolkien, etymology geeks, fans of Finnish literature (there are some great references to The Kalevala), etc.

For those who (like me) wished to have been able to ask Tolkien himself about the Entwives, the Blue Wizards, Tom Bombadil, where Elves go after they die in battle, the major themes of LOTR, the particularities of Quenya and Sindarin, or so many other questions, this is the book for you. Letter 131 alone is extremely informative and quotable in that regard.

But aside from being a dragon-hoard full of lore, these letters also tell the story of a man with the simple wish to write legends (initially) for his own amusement, who finds himself continually restricted in this endeavour by endless work and other hardships. Even after a storied academic carreer and surprising literary success, the story ends rather tragically and suddenly when Tolkien passes away without having been able to publish the story that was the core of the entire legendarium and the most personally important to him: The Silmarillion.

After reading an incredible story, one can't really help becoming interested in the mind from which it originated, a fact that Tolkien resented most bitterly, because it distracted from the story. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed getting to know him a bit through his letters, which ranged from scathing remarks to publishers who dared to misspell "dwarves" as "dwarfs" to grateful and elaborate responses to reader's enquiries about Hobbit customs. You can't help but develop a fondness for this incredibly erudite, humble, particular, peculiar, hobbit-like, and outspokenly Catholic man.

Review title: Inside the Private world of Tolkien

After watching the new movie biopic "Tolkien" (as the only person in the theater on a holiday Saturday afternoon matinee showing) I began reading this collection of his letters selected and edited by Humphrey Carpenter with assistance by Tolkien's son Christopher. Tolkien wrote the classics The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings not just as fun and inspiring tales but as expressions of deep philosophical, linguistic (Tolkien was an Oxford professor of philology, the study of literary texts), and historical meaning. I read those books before I started recording my book reviews, but when I go back and reread them they will certainly end up with five-star classic ratings.

He was also a most unusual man, as this selection of 354 of his letters reveal, in many ways a man at cross purposes to his time and place. He was born in South Africa to British parents, was orphaned at the age of 12, earned a place at Oxford despite his humble financial status and Catholic religion,and fell in love with a fellow orphan when he was 16 and she was 19. When his guardian forbade their relationship until Tolkien turned 21, Tolkien and Edith abided by the ban but remained in love, married, and enjoyed a life long marriage. Intensely literate, he invented languages, stories to be told in them, and characters and worlds for them to populate.

The selected letters, sadly only a very few to Edith because few of those letters survived, cluster around his children, publication of his works, and his ideas on language and the sources and meaning of his books. In his letters to his children, he is a loving and engaged father. His letters to his publishers (primarily Allen and Unwin in the UK and Houghton Mifflin in the US) show a prickly and persistent side which does not abide fools or disagreement kindly. His letters to professors, family, critics, and readers about his books are the longest and most interesting, especially to those who love the books and the blockbuster movies Peter Jackson lovingly crafted from them. Tolkien goes to great lengths, referring back through not only the published works but his working notes and invented myths (the then unpublished Silmarillian, which actually held the first-written roots of his invented world), and at times expounding deeper connections. In a world where Game of Thrones is a massively downloaded series, invented worlds are a staple; Tolkien provided the insurpassable model for completeness and complexity.

For those readers coming to Tolkien via the GoT route, perhaps the best surprise is how spiritual Tolkien and his world is, and how philosophically serious he was about it. In explaining his concept of eucatastrope--"the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears"--in a letter to Christopher, Tolkien applies the term to the account of the Resurrection in the Gospels:

Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story:  the greatest.  Man the story- teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature:  by a moving story." (P. 100-101)

Answering a reader's question (in a letter that takes up 10 pages of this collection!) about morality and mortality in the Lord of the Rings:

A divine 'punishment' is also a divine 'gift', if accepted, since it's object is ultimate blessing, and the supreme inventiveness of the Creator will make 'punishments' (that is changes of design) produce a good not otherwise to be attained: a 'mortal' Man has probably (an Elf would say) a higher if unrevealed destiny than a longeval one. To attempt by device or 'magic' to recover longevity is his a supreme folly and wickedness of 'mortals'. Longevity or counterfeit 'immortality' . . . is the chief bait of Sauron--it leads the small to a Gollum, and the great to a Ringwraith. (p. 286)

But as a man so in love with language, he also loves to play with it. In one of several letters on the name of the faithful friend Sam Gamgee, Tolkien says he remembered the word used to mean 'cotton-wool' in Birmingham in the UK when he was a small boy. But for his invented language, character, and world, he writes that it was originally "Gamwich" , pronounced  "gammidge", with the diminutive -y added, so "Gamwichy", which would be pronounced "Gammidgey"--hence shortened to Gamgee. And, in a confirmation of a running joke in the Tolkien biopic, he is concerned that people spell (I before e) and pronounce ("Toll-Keen", he writes phonetically) his name right.

It is obvious that the screenwriters for the biopic had these letters amongst their source materials, and anyone who loved the books and wants to know more about their writer would enjoy them. There is an index of references to the books plus a general index, and some brief footnotes explaining references in the letters. In addition to the few letters to Edith, the other major gap is letters to C. S. Lewis (see
The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams), his fellow Inkling. But despite those gaps, this is still an important and worthy source.

@TolkienKC ~ Read for the Tolkien Society of Kansas City and finishing our discussion on Friday, August 24, 2018, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central.

I feel like I have a deeper understanding of Tolkien after reading this, not just as an author but as a human.

One night my wife looked over at me sitting on the couch and asked, “are you seriously reading that book?” She could not understand why anyone would want to read hundreds of pages of someone’s personal letters. Admittedly, it is rather odd. This book is certainly not for everyone. But for those who have enjoyed Tolkien’s stories, this set of letters offers an intriguing and enlightening glimpse into his mind. I most enjoyed seeing Tolkien speak of his Catholic faith as well as getting the window into his mind as he worked, for years and years, on writing the Lord of the Rings. Honestly, I found myself skimming more and more of the letters as I went as it did get a bit tedious. The verdict is, if you are a fan of Tolkien then this book might just be for you.

Reading Tolkien's letters is truly a delight, getting to know the man and his personality and desires and idiosyncrasies. "Seeing" him juggle his duties of professor, writer, and father, his failures and rejections, and how long it took for his work to be published not only made him more real, but was an encouragement to me in my writing endeavors. It was especially interesting to see how he wrote the Silmarillion first, and even though it wasn't published in his lifetime (not for lack of trying on his part!), it fed everything else he wrote.

I certainly have a better understanding of his works and what he was trying to accomplish through them, even in the things I'll never understand (like his great love of languages for languages' sake!). On my next read-throughs of his works, I want to pay more attention to the mortality, machine, and fall themes above the more oft-proposed power as the main theme, as well as the ennoblement of the ignoble and the idea of giving a history and place to languages.

I still love to poke at his denial of allegory in his work, but think I have a better grasp on why he denied it (since it flowed out of his worldview more than any intention, his mind didn't think in allegories, and his intent was writing a particular story, not giving some kind of universal story or commentary about good/evil/power).

The best letters:
30--his reply to a German publisher when asked if he was Aryan (he's super cheeky).
131--the famous Waldman letter, giving so much background into his work and ideas--especially the themes of machine, mortality, fall, and sub-creation.
153--more on sub-creation and religion.
163--on linguistics.
246--Frodo's success and failure.
310--purpose of life.

And now, some top quotes:
(page numbers here, not letter numbers)

147 “The doom of the Elves is to be immortal, to love the beauty of the world, to bring it to full flower with their gifts of delicacy and perfection, to last while it lasts, never leaving it even when ‘slain’, but returning—and yet, when the Followers come, to teach them, and make way for them, to ‘fade’ as the Followers grow and absorb the life from which both proceed.”

149 “The great policies of world history, ‘the wheels of the world’, are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak—owing to the secret life in creation, and the part unknowable to all wisdom but One.”

212 “It is I suppose impossible to write any ‘story’ that is not allegorical in proportion as it ‘comes to life’; since each of us is an allegory, embodying in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time and place, universal truth and everlasting life.”

400 “Those who believe in a personal God, Creator, do not think the Universe is in itself worshipful, though devoted study of it may be one of the ways of honoring Him.”
“So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis…we praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendor.”

417 “But now she [Edith/Luthien] has gone before Beren, leaving him indeed one-handed, but he has no power to move the inexorable Mandos, and there is no Dor Gyrth I chuinar, the Land of the Dead that Live, in this Fallen Kingdom of Arda, where the servants of Morgoth are worshipped…”

Tolkien speaks often in these letters about his distaste for the over-analysis of literature. He says that trying to learn more about the author and his life and trying to fit the literature into that outside environment is unwise, and basically, annoying. So, as I read these letters of Tolkien I tried not to let what I learned about him, his life, and his views color the stories, particularly those, of course, of the Legendarium. As I am apt to over-analyze things, especially those for which I have much zeal, I was thankful that his letters made it easy! In fact, I was more encouraged than ever to know just how much the story was not written with specific events, thoughts, or intentions in mind. In one of the last letters of the book, Tolkien recalls a story in which an acquaintance shows him paintings that were created long before Middle-earth, yet seemed to almost illustrate Lord of the Rings. Tolkien insisted, truthfully, that he had never seen the paintings before. The man exclaims, embodying Gandalf utterly, "Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?" To me, these stories just are. They speak truths. These letters support that.

And, I learned a lot and the letters were mostly all delightful. On a less important note, I doubt any casual Middle-earth reader will enjoy these letters, unless they just like reading letters.