When did Tolkien first get a secretary to answer his mail, I always thought it was 1965 which is the year after this letter?

You may be thinking of Joy Hill, who began to help Tolkien with his fan mail by mid-1965. Christopher Tolkien has assumed that his father obtained a secretary circa December 1957. The earliest mention we have seen of Tolkien having a secretary is in a letter to Rayner Unwin of 24 February 1959. (See our Chronology, pp. 799-800.)

Wayne & Christina

The letter seems genuine to us too, typed by a secretary but signed (quickly, in ballpoint) by Tolkien. For what it's worth, we've never seen a secretary-typed letter from Tolkien that he didn't sign personally, except for those clearly marked "p.p." (per procuriationem, by delegation to) with the secretary's name or initials. None of Tolkien's secretaries, as far as we know, ever tried to imitate his signature -- we doubt that he would have approved of the deception. Nor is it likely that Tolkien, who always took special care when writing to children, would not have signed this particular letter himself.

Wayne & Christina

It's a questionable signature, the portion of text reveals nothing about style and little of use for comparing the typeface to attested Tolkien typed letters, and we found no instance of his having used "Very truly yours" as a closing in a spot-check of our Tolkien correspondence files.

Wayne and Christina

We too would like to know if our later corrections and the new index, and the correct facsimile Ring inscription in Book I, Chapter 2, have been included in the deluxe Lord of the Rings back in stock -- or were they already in the second or third printing, if a new printing would be a fourth? As editors and collectors we got the first printing, but haven't heard anything about what has come later for the deluxe. (We've bought some later, updated printings of the trade edition when in England.)

The new index of course is longer than the old one, and adding pages would add bulk to the book, which would affect the special binding case and slipcase, so looking at it from the point of view of economy, we suspect that the current deluxe printing is the same as the first -- but one never knows.

We also put this question to HarperCollins the other day, not however expecting a reply until January.

And now we're wondering as well if the Houghton Mifflin LR has been reprinted, with or without corrections. In bookshops it's always shrinkwrapped, so there's no way to check when browsing.

Best wishes to all for the holidays,

Wayne and Christina

I'm not sure why Wayne and Christina have not mentioned it here

Modesty, Trotter, sheer modesty! And the desire to have a few posts to our credit before publicizing.

In regard to the photo in our earliest post, for which one must now scroll to the bottom, the books are all foreign-language editions of Tolkien. There are as many shelves of these again on the opposite wall, and still more on the shorter wall to the left and also to the right, out of the picture. The grey archival boxes on top are some of our Tolkien fanzines.

Wayne and Christina