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Re: Books from Tolkien's Personal Library??

Subject: Re: Books from Tolkien's Personal Library??
by Findegil on 2008/10/12 6:18:34

The "[JRRT]" doesn't strike me as either Tolkien's or Christopher's handwriting. The letterforms don't seem quite right. It could easily be, and probably is, just something inserted by a bookseller. (You're right, Stu, it could have been written by anybody.) Of course, dealers like to entice prospective buyers with suggestions that a book might have added value, e.g. initials by JRRT or CRT.

I'm reminded of when I bought a copy of Oxford Poetry 1915 (containing Tolkien's "Goblin Feet"). The seller originally claimed that it was signed by two of the contributors, Tolkien and Aldous Huxley -- very nice if so. But it had already been returned by a Huxley collector, who said that Huxley's name was not in his handwriting; so it was offered to me with the deal that if Tolkien's name wasn't his signature either, I could have the book at half price. I needed only one look at "J. Tolkein" to come to a conclusion. (And a closer look, even with a small sampling, shows that both "A.L. Huxley" and "J. Tolkein" are in the same hand.)

Wayne