It is probable that J.R.R. Tolkien was throughout his life a copious correspondent, but he appears to have been in his midforties before people took to preserving what he had addressed to them. Even so, Humphrey Carpenter has found that 'an immense number' of letters survive. In projecting the present selection, he realised that 'an enormous quantity of material would have to be omitted' and that 'only passages of particular interest could be included.' In the event, he has given priority to those letters in which Tolkien discusses his own books, but he has also worked with 'an eye to demonstrating the huge range of Tolkien's mind and interests'.

LRB 17 September 1981 | PDF Download