Into the Archive: The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (Revised and Expanded Version)

 

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (Revised and Expanded Version), Edited and Selected by Humphrey Carpenter with the Assistance of Christopher Tolkien (William Morrow, an Imprint of Harper Collins; 2023; 708 pages).

I received this beautiful book for Christmas from my niece Kaitlyn, after she specifically asked me what I wanted. For all its size, it sits nicely in the hand and is bound so that it falls easily open to every page and stays open, pre-eminently designed as a scholar’s reference but graceful enough to adorn any bibliophile’s shelves.

It is hard to believe that for the 1981 First Edition (which I bought at the time; how long ago that seems now!), it was felt that it was necessary to cut 150 of the letters that Carpenter and Christopher had selected, and trim several others, to bring the volume down to an ‘appealing’ and affordable size. Tolkien was already huge, but not as huge as it would become over the years, and now demand and interest (and book-binding skills, apparently) will easily support the restoration of the editor’s original intent.

The letters restored deal largely with personal family minutiae, the intricacies Tolkien had to go through getting his works published, and details of his work as a professor, thus rounding out our image of Tolkien as a man as well as an author. The original publication tended to stress details related to his writings and the highlights of his life. The restored letters are published in chronological order with the original published missives, but with a letter added to the number (thus Letter 274 is followed by 274a, and so on).

The only personal bug in the bucket, as it were, is that just in the April of this year I had finally purchased a new/old edition with merely a New, Expanded Index, right before it was announced that this deluxe edition was coming in November. Ah, well. You can never have too much Tolkien. I spent a goodly portion of last night browsing to read the new letters, and look forward to even deeper sessions to come.