Extremely insightful. I love how Tolkien was, just like all of us, fed up with admin work through most of his life. There is a better review here on goodreads, so go find that one for a more general feel of the book.

A fascinating insight, albeit only a small one, into the life and thoughts of an author I so strongly admire. Aside from the very interesting parts about his life, the sort of kick in the stomach at the first letters after the death of his wife, the fact that there's so much thought and story about Middle-Earth and all his other works, was an absolute pleasure to read. If I'm going to write about Lord of the Rings for my thesis, who better to explain the vast universe than Tolkien himself? Absolutely a must read for all fans, and I need to add this book to my Tolkien collection as fast as possible.

The TL;DR is that I borrowed this from a friend, stayed up way too late finishing it, and will be buying my own copy first thing tomorrow.

Not only is this immensely interesting as a fan of Lord of the Rings, it also functions as a backdoor biography. Tolkien is such an interesting character, and while I'm afraid he wouldn't have liked me very much, I can't help but loving him. He's funny, thoughtful, surprisingly sassy, and his creative journey is a story in and of itself.

This is a "must" for any die hard fan of lord of the rings, and I'd say a "probably" for any casual fan with an interest in the behind the scenes.

Outstanding.

Being a huge fan of Tolkien’s work, I had never really known much about his life itself. This book was a unique and deeply insightful look into Tolkien’s life, his thoughts, his stances, and his seemingly constant procrastination.

It was quite amusing to see him repeatedly excusing his “lateness” due to *(enter excuse here)*. Humorous, but of course, writing a story is a big job and I cannot imagine what it would be like to write during a war and only with pen and paper. A very different time!

For any Tolkien fan, this is a collection you will want to read! Perfect to gain insight into how Middle Earth and all its history was truly created!

Reading this was, poignantly, a lot like the first time I read Lord of the Rings. You start out wondering what all this is and who this man is. You continue on feeling as if you have made the best of friends and are fully invested in their lives, and then it ends. You close the book and they're gone and you must carry on without them. Life feels empty. You wonder what they're doing, how they're doing, you consider starting the book over just to walk with them again. They have grown, as Data would say, familiar.
The other thing that struck me reading this book was how insecure old age is, and then sense of not having enough time to finish your work or love those you love. I'm middle aged, but this struck me as the great difficulties of old age.
Tolkien was sharp, a bit of a curmudgeon, loved trees and his family, hated how misunderstood his work was, or misused. I think I would have found him very intimidating in real life, but also wonderful.
It was a true and real pleasure to read the letters and walk through the life of my favorite author and not feel disappointed. He wasn't a celebrity, but he was a very intelligent and gifted man.

This book is simply a must-read if you're a Tolkien fan. Most of the letters in this book are really interesting and they certainly changed the way I see Tolkien. The letters contain fascinating information on the absolutely huge creation process of LoTR and the whole mythology, which was probably the most interesting part of this book. But even more important, they shed light on the mind and thoughts of this great man.

After reading this, I feel like I know Tolkien a lot better than I did from just reading his books (although I probably still don't know him at all). I got an image of a tired, overworked but hard-working man completely dedicated to his work (both professional and leisure). Sometimes it was hard to get what he was trying to say since he had so many thoughts and so little time to write everything down. But that was one of his well-known characteristics. What I did get out of his letters was the love for his family, languages and religion, not to mention the amount of thought he put into the stories that were the closest to his heart. And of course, there were many funny letters as well, for example the ones concerning the many difficulties Tolkien had with people who didn't know what to think of the books (or those who had never read them while claiming to know everything about them).

If possible, I appreciate Tolkien's mythology even more now than I used to. It was his life's work (of course he did many other things, too) which is to be seen clearly here. This collection of letters was a very good and interesting read. Being written by the great author himself, how could they disappoint? All fans must read this.

Among various types of writing (fiction, poetry, critical essay, script writing, etc etc), correspondence is usually seen as a very minor (if at all) art. Do we often think about the fact that our letters (or, let's be real, our e-mails or Messenger and Whatsapp written exchanges) could be potent expressions of ourselves, containing way more than the requisite and minimal exchange of information with an interlocutor : (in)jokes, efforts to show emotion, storytelling, attemps to connect with a real or imagined audience of one or more, etc ?.. It seems to me that correspondence is where the line between “Artist” (whomst we tend to place outside of “normal people” as possessing some kind of innate qualities or “talent”) and everyday “artist” (everyone of us insofar as we express ourselves into any medium and create something out of something else) is the thinnest. Any written word presupposes intention, thinking about what we're going to write, in a moment that can last anywhere from two seconds to three months. In that intention and distance, communication becomes art.
tThose were the thoughts rattling in my head while reading the huge mass of letters written by J.R.R.Tolkien. The letters reveal something of both the artist and the man. Tolkien having been a very private person, the selection of letters is adequately representative of that, focusing mostly on his thoughts about the creation of his works and his whole lifelong mythology (adressed either to friends, his editor, or, later in his life, to fans), and the letters giving glimpses into his personal life are very few. Both are fascinating in their own way, even if Tolkien himself (as he reminds often in numerous letters) espoused a (somewhat contradictory and fragmentary) belief in the concept the Death of the Author. That is, he firmly disagreed with a “biographical” interpretation of a text relating to an author's life, yet at the same time, was fiercely protective of his own view and interpretation of the books and quite disapproving at times of other interpretations (it seems in line with what I tend to call the “soft” version of the Death of the Author concept : the book existing independently of the author once released into the world, but the original author still retaining some authority over the interpretation of the books, while accepting that others might offer different interpretations that have merit).
tTolkien's art has been a subject of different controversies over the decades, and interpreted in various ways. The author himself was championed and claimed by every corner of the political spectrum. He was said to be an anarchist, a fascist, a conservative, a monarchist ... and so forth. I find it interesting that his letters do indeed give us a glimpse of a passionate and contradictory mind. He wasn't really an anarchist, at least not in the (true) leftist sense, having a strongly hierarchical mind linked to his Christian conservatism, yet he despised the lust for power in itself and was wary of anyone exhibiting it. I would say that he wasn't a fascist either, both by his negative reactions to real fascist regimes (except for a soft spot for Franco's which seems to be born more out of ignorance about the real happenings in it) and his rejection of any person trying to impose their will onto others. He definitely was a Christian Conservative (and has many amusing proto-boomer thoughts about women in trousers during Mass, the Beatles and modern jazz) and had a strong faith tinged with melancholy. He doesn't really seem to have had a coherent political ideology, and was more influenced by his feeling of living in a “fallen” world where everything not related to the highest most transcendent matters was bound to failure and decrepitude.
tThis melancholy tone carries over from the beginning, in his first letters written during WWI, sometimes directly from the trenches, through his later success and fame – which often made him very uncomfortable – and right until the end of his life. It lingers, like a cloud, even over his most joyous moments, his triumphs, his passions, his quiet appreciation of nature and music, his marriage, his advice to his (four) children.
tWhich isn't to say that there aren't any other emotions at play. Tolkien being a clearly passionate individual, his letters are often barely contained bundles of excitement or fury hidden behind a veneer of respectable "gentlemanly" expression. I found some of his petty rages to be particularly entertaining. While reading letters more or less in order, one comes to know Tolkien's mind and his triggers, and I, for instance, remember anticipating him going berserk over an absurd cover of the Hobbit (in the introduction to the letter number 277 : “The cover picture showed a lion, two emus, and a tree with bulbous fruit”) and thinking “this is gonna be good”. He had a very clear picture in his mind regarding his "sub-creation" (a very important concept in his understanding of art and litterature), and had difficulty accepting things that deviated from it too strongly.
tAll in all, the letters were a fascinating look into someone's lifework (and contained very many nerdy details about said lifework for obsessive types like me) and the different ways it can be expressed in correspondence, each interlocutor receiving a piece of it, and we, the readers, godlike, putting it all together with distance and hindsight.

BONUS ROUND

tI do admit I did chuckle when reading this : “[about women] they do not as a rule talk 'bawdy'; not because they are purer than men (they are not) but because they don't find it funny. I have known those who pretended to, but it is a pretence. It may be intriguing, interesting, absorbing (even a great deal too absorbing) to them : but it is just plumb natural, a serious, obvious interest; where is the joke?” (letter number 42). In my experience, this is absolutely true. There is a lot to be said about sex, and jokes to be had about a variety of sexual situations, and women do engage in it, but the only ones who goes “har har, sex” about the mere mention of the existence of sex have always been men. Maybe it's a defense mechanism because men find earnestly thinking about it uncomfortable ?.. (I'm of course painting with a wide brush and do recognize that it is a socially constructed thing, and not anything inherent in being a man or a woman).
tThe last thing that makes me chuckle everytime, is Tolkien raging about his name being misspelled as “Tolkein” and going into insane linguistic lengths and explanations to explain why it is “Tolkien” rather than “Tolkein”, and his name still being misspelled very often. If he were alive today, I can hardly imagine the rages he'll fly into, because I still see this misspelling absolutely everywhere, from Youtube comments to articles written about his work. I guess some things never change.

Taking this off my currently reading because it's as good as read even if I was studying particular chunks for thesis and may not have intensely studied every single letter. I know more about this man's life than my own father's so I think we're good to go

Although not for the casual reader, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien is a very interesting look into Tolkien's writing process, his opinions on matters ranging from Disney to the purpose of life, and the pre-internet publishing industry.

I got the sense that Tolkien was a serial procrastinator when it came to writing, as he was constantly explaining to his editors why he hadn't been able to make any progress on his work, or apologizing to a friend/acquaintance for not answering their letter sooner. Nice to know that I have something in common with the great professor!

One of my favorite letters is #30, in which Tolkien beautifully eviscerates the German publishers of The Hobbit for asking him if he had any Aryan heritage. I'm going to quote it in full here (under a spoiler cut for length) because it's that amazing:

n  

nDear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and

remain yours faithfully,

J. R. R. Tolkienn

n
A letter that I enjoyed much less was #43, in which he reveals some pretty terrible opinions about women, including this gem:

nThe sexual impulse makes women... very ready to enter into all the interests, as far as they can, from ties to religion, of the young man they are attracted to. No intent necessarily to deceive: sheer instinct: the servient, helpmeet instinct, generously warmed by desire and young blood. Under this impulse they can in fact often achieve very remarkable insight and understanding, even of things otherwise outside their natural range: for it is their gift to be receptive, stimulated, fertilized (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point – and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand, or when they cease to take a personal interest in him.n

...





So yeah, ladies, you can only ascend to higher planes of learning if you really want to fuck your male professors! Guess you lesbians are just shit out of luck.

That was without a doubt the low point of this book for me, but fortunately none of his other letters express similar beliefs, so I mostly tried to pretend I hadn't read it. I've actually been one Tolkien's defenders in the sexism debate, because I've always thought - and still think, even now - that the paucity of female characters in his works is somewhat balanced by their variety* and quality. But letter #43 makes it pretty clear that he considered women to be lesser than men.

(*Well, they're all white. And mostly beautiful/"fair." But I mean in terms of their roles, which range from Hobbit matriarch to wise woman to shieldmaiden. The women of Middle-earth are equally capable of heroic deeds as the men, and even when confined to the domestic sphere they still command respect and power.)

Letter #43 aside, however - and apart from some really boring letters on etymology - I found The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien to be pretty fascinating, and I would definitely recommend it to serious Tolkien fans.

P.S. For all the Tolkien purists' insistence that Tolkien would have hated the movies (an opinion which I believe is shared by the Tolkien estate), in more than one letter Tolkien mentioned that he was willing to sanction less than desirable adaptations if the royalties were good enough. No, really:

nStanley U. & I have agreed on our policy: Art or Cash. Either very profitable terms indeed; or absolute author's veto on objectionable features or alterations. (#202)

So, even if Tolkien felt like Peter Jackson was taking too many liberties, I'm guessing he wouldn't have complained about the paychecks.

P.P.S. In case you were wondering, Tolkien hated Disney.

I felt so privileged and enriched to be able to get few glimpses of the life and mind of the Professor.

Absolutely 100% essential. When one sees first-hand what the modern cult-follower, the clueless "fan," and especially what Hollywood, have done to distort and cheapen the pure vision of this humble (yet deep) writer, one is just sickened to the core.