Review: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition

Any writer who wishes to develop a quick inferiority complex should look to the bibliography of J.R.R. Tolkien. During his lifetime, he published the most influential essay ever written on the Old English poem Beowulf. Alongside this, his short works of fiction, including stories, poems and plays, were printed in journals and as standalone books. And, of course, his Middle-earth novels – The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – were enormously successful and are now acknowledged as the greatest works of fantasy ever written.

But these works represent only a fraction of Tolkien’s prodigious output. The volume of notes and unpublished materials left behind after his death was so enormous that it has sustained a 50-year publishing industry. In fact, Tolkien’s posthumous books now dwarf the quantity of those released during his lifetime.

This week, a new volume informs us that, in addition to all these published and posthumous works, Tolkien also found time to become “one of the most prolific letter-writers of [the 20th] century.” A selection of this correspondence was first released in 1981, as The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien – edited by Tolkien’s official biographer, Humphrey Carpenter. However, Carpenter’s original outline was abridged so the resulting book would be affordable and of a publishable length. Now, over 40 years later, this new volume – subtitled as a “Revised and Expanded Edition” – restores over 150 letters excised from Carpenter’s first draft, while also lengthening more than 40 letters that were cut down.

A new foreword to this expanded edition argues, the letters are, in many ways “the closest thing we can ever have to J.R.R. Tolkien’s autobiography.” What this allows us is a much keener insight into Tolkien’s personality. And these insights are particularly genuine, given that Tolkien was writing in private to friends, family and colleagues, with no notion that his correspondence would someday be available for the public to read.

One of the most notable elements of Tolkien’s personality on display in the letters is his persistent grumbling. It is remarkable how many of the letters abound with complaints about ill health – both his own and his family’s – as well as his financial woes. One might assume, given the cemented legacy of The Lord of the Rings, that Tolkien lived a wealthy and comfortable life. But he was over 60 years old by the time the book was published, and for much of his career he struggled to support his family, taking on additional work as an examination marker (another source of grumbling in his letters) to earn extra money. Despite these hardships, the letters reveal that Tolkien bore his burdens with Hobbitish good humor. But his grumbling became more serious when he reflected on the state of the world.

As the letters show, Tolkien was clearly a man with a strong sense of morality, and in his estimation, the world was moving steadily in the wrong direction. As his complaints about the modern world suggest, Tolkien’s politics were deeply conservative. His traditionalism was so acute that he bemoaned the creation of even the most fundamental machinery of modern society: “How I wish the ‘infernal combustion’ engine had never been invented,” he writes in a letter to his son Christopher. So, one can imagine that were he alive today, he might be among the most radical environmentalists, staging disruptive protests to halt the construction of new oil pipelines or airports.

Likewise, Tolkien’s letters reveal him to be an enemy of globalism – the world “is getting to be all one blasted provincial suburb,” he complains to Christopher. But this insular viewpoint also positions him as a staunch defender of local language, culture and indigenous rights. When he learns that the English language has spread to an eighth of the world’s population, he judges it a “damn shame” and threatens to return to speaking the ancient dialect of “Old Mercian.”

J.R.R. Tolkien’s thoughts on The Lord of the Rings and Middle-earth

Many of these complex and seemingly contradictory aspects of Tolkien’s character were already known and revealed in Carpenter’s 1981 edition of the letters. But this expanded volume adds further depth to our understanding of the author. For fans of Middle-earth, this expanded edition also reveals much about the creation of The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s philosophy of his “secondary world.”

From this point of view, the centerpiece of the book might be the restored text of Letter 131. This letter is already legendary among Tolkien fans, revealing the author’s full accounting of his fictional mythology, from the First Age through the events of The Lord of the Rings. Written to a prospective publisher in 1951, this colossal 10,000-word letter had to be heavily edited for Carpenter’s original volume of letters. But now it is fully restored, including Tolkien’s own summary of The Lord of the Rings, which features several interesting insights into his interpretation of the story.

For instance, Tolkien suggests that he numbered the Fellowship of the Ring at nine members to serve “as counterpart to the Nine Riders,” otherwise known as the Ringwraiths. Given Tolkien’s emphasis on numerology across The Lord of the Rings, it is fascinating to note that these two groups were conceived as a conscious pairing, especially since the Fellowship and the Ringwraiths never meet in their complete forms. Another insight Tolkien reveals is his conception of Gollum as “Caliban-like,” a reference to the character from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It is a comparison that is surely ripe for academic examination, given Tolkien’s complex relationship with Shakespeare; at times he expressed dislike for the playwright, but seems also to have drawn inspiration from him on several occasions.

What Letter 131 reveals most, however, is Tolkien’s overall vision for his Middle-earth mythology. He clearly believed that it was essential for The Silmarillion to be published in conjunction with The Lord of the Rings, despite the fact that he never finished the former to his satisfaction. It was only after his death that The Silmarillion was brought into a publishable form by his son, Christopher. But Tolkien also acknowledges that there is a power in leaving things unsaid. “[I]t is the untold stories that are most moving,” he writes in one letter.

That sentiment could equally apply to this new volume of letters. Although it adds a lot of new content to the corpus of Tolkien’s correspondence, it leaves even more unsaid. Indeed, since Carpenter first assembled The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien in 1981, hundreds more letters have been discovered. At present, the Tolkien Collector’s Guide lists over 1,200 known Tolkien letters, with more being added every week. But in this expanded edition, only a little over 500 are published.

This might lead fans to wonder why this new volume has been assembled using 40-year-old scholarship, rather than taking into account more recent discoveries that would allow for a fuller study. Indeed, the book contains several frustrating gaps that could have been filled. For instance, there is nothing in the book prior to 1914, an unfortunate omission given that most of these known earlier letters are addressed to Edith Bratt, Tolkien’s future wife and a major inspiration for several aspects of his legendarium. There is also a gap between 1925 and 1934, despite the fact that several letters are known to have been written in this period, which could shed valuable light on Tolkien’s early academic career prior to writing The Hobbit.

Indeed, it seems that there are enough letters out there to sustain a more complete multi-volume series, similar to Faber’s The Letters of T.S. Eliot. If letters from Tolkien’s correspondents were included as well, even more volumes could be produced. Having these responses could add further context to Tolkien’s letters and demonstrate more clearly his personality and humor in communicating with famous friends such as C.S. Lewis and W.H. Auden, as well as professional acquaintances, such as his publishers at Allen & Unwin.

Given Tolkien’s seemingly unending popularity, a more complete publication of his letters is surely inevitable in the future. But the finite nature of his writings seems to have influenced his estate to release the materials in a slow trickle, rather than opening the floodgates. There is certainly a financial motive behind this decision, and fans may be justified in grumbling about having to purchase multiple editions over the years before they can get the full materials. But this approach of gradually releasing the unpublished writings also plays a role in sustaining public interest in Tolkien, even 50 years after his death. After all, there is great power in untold stories, and as long as Tolkien fans know there are still unseen materials out there, the mythology can remain alive, as can our hopes that there might be just a little more of Middle-earth yet to be discovered.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels