By most accounts it’s thought that Tolkien was at least as prolific a letter writer, and perhaps more so, than Lewis. Lewis has more than 3,000 letters in his “Collected Letters” series. Even if Tolkien were simply on par with Lewis, that would easily put him in the “thousands” range. Don’t forget that Tolkien lived 10 years longer than Lewis. The last decade of Lewis’s life he was averaging about 100 letters per year (that have been published - it was likely a bit higher than that in total). So Tolkien could have 1,000 more letters than Lewis if he wrote at the same pace. Even if he wrote at a slower pace, his 10 extra years would probably put him at a comparable overall number of publishable letters. Heck if you look at the TCG Guide of just the letters we know about, the Guide already has more than 1,200 letters written by Tolkien noted. More are discovered all the time and there are plenty we don’t know about. I think it’s safe to say there are at least as many publishable Tolkien letters out there as Lewis has, and likely quite a bit more (if they have survived)

Keep me posted, please, on the topic of the number of Tolkien's letters. I don't understand how he would have had occasion to write anything close to the number Lewis wrote, because Tolkien wasn't a popular broadcaster, author of works of apologetics and spirituality, scholarship, etc. Who would Tolkien's correspondents have been and what would he and they be discussing? My impression is that Tolkien did reply quite often to people who wrote to him about LotR, but that after the paperbacking thereof, the volume of letters soon was so much that Joy Hill served as secretary and, probably, Tolkien never read quite a few of those letters -- let along written replies. I don't remember Carpenter or Edwards in their biographies saying anything that gave the impression Tolkien liked to write letters and poured them out. Lewis liked to write letters, as I mentioned, to his friends, and as for so many strangers who wrote to him, he understood himself to have a duty towards them. I would be surprised if Tolkien wrote a fifth as many letters even granted his extra years of life as Lewis did. I'd be very interested to be proved wrong about this.

I'm not counting brief letters about committees and whatnot -- basically memos relating to routine university duties. Tolkien would have written more of these, I imagine, than Lewis, who was kept in a relatively low-status position until he left Oxford (as I understand).

Ultimately, we will only be able to tell by time and how many Tolkien letters come out. But I think some of these thoughts are somewhat cherry-picking things to focus on. For example, you focus on how many correspondents Lewis would have written to due to being a popular broadcaster and apologetics writer (all true) but Lewis also had no children for most of his life. And even then only had one adopted child he regularly corresponded with and only for a few years late in life. Tolkien had 4 children who became adults and moved away and whom he corresponded with often, not to mention a number of grandchildren to whom he regularly wrote letters. And Lewis was not married until late in life and only for a short period of time, whereas Tolkien wrote often to Edith. For example, Carpenter mentions that "among the omissions" from Letters is "the very large body of letters he wrote between 1913 and 1918 to Edith." So there are areas Lewis had more correspondents and areas Tolkien had more and though Tolkien's may have been fewer, he was writing to them very regularly.

And as far as "who would Tolkien's correspondents have been" - we know Tolkien collaborated with several fellow professors on academic work (E.V. Gordon being the most obvious) and also with students and former students; yet almost none of the correspondence with these academics has been published or found. Even if it was not extensive (which it may have been) it is likely to have been more than what is currently known. Carpenter, for example mentions that very few Tolkien letters (comparatively) survived from the pre-1937 years.

I also think it's not fair to focus on Joy Hill assisting Tolkien with letters when it's very well known that Lewis had extensive help with his letters. As Douglas Gresham wrote: "Jack received letters from all over the world, most of which Warnie would answer for Jack and then take to Jack for his approval and signature...Warnie handled the bulk of his correspondence." (quote from Lenten Lands). Though you mention thinking Tolkien would have written more brief/routine letters, many of Lewis's letters are brief, and at least a good portion of them probably were also written or at least assisted by Warnie, Douglas Gresham, or others. And Tolkien wrote that he enjoyed writing long letters (e.g., in Letter 250). We also know that Lewis did not (and could not) use typewriters, whereas Tolkien regularly made use of them, so that's another instance where it's possible Tolkien would be able to either make up ground on Lewis in letter-writing, or perhaps even exceed him.

Additionally, though you don't remember Carpenter or Edwards mentioning Tolkien enjoying letter-writing, Carpenter does in fact say this in the introduction to Letters: "letter-writing was on most occasions a favourite activity with him." And Tolkien himself, in a letter to his son Michael, noted "I do not think you have inherited a dislike of letterwriting from me..." (Letter 250). Meanwhile, it's clear that Lewis seems to have felt letter writing to be drudgery. In Surprised by Joy, he writes that in a "happy life" "a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman's knock." He also described Easter as a season he disliked because "everyone writes to me at Easter" (Letter from April 17, 1954). Lewis scholar Brenton Dickieson has speculated that Lewis felt dread, or at least a "deep burden" about correspondence.

And finally, I think it's worth noting that Carpenter only spent two years collecting the inclusions in Letters (and who knows if that was even full-time work, doubtful knowing Carpenter's feelings towards Tolkien). Whereas Walter Hooper and Douglas Gresham both dedicated many, many years toward collecting and publishing Lewis's letters. It's possible that taking into account the large volume of letters Tolkien wrote Edith which Carpenter notes were specifically omitted, the other letters Carpenter and Christopher reviewed and did not include even in the first manuscript, and the additional 700 letters we now know about in the TCG Guide, that the number of Tolkien letters would already approach the number of published Lewis letters.

I sincerely hope that one day when someone has the time and inclination to do for Tolkien what Walter Hooper did for Lewis and can spend years of time and money on the letter collection project, that one day we will hopefully have 5,000 or more Tolkien letters to enjoy.

Dale Nelson wrote:

I'm not counting brief letters about committees and whatnot -- basically memos relating to routine university duties. Tolkien would have written more of these...(as I understand).

I was trying to work out some rough numbers for you but this statement would render any numbers I can give (from work on the Letters Guide) as moot. Until we have entered all of the available letters and assessed what has the 'meat' you are referring to as letters rather than memos, we basically will not have any accurate numbers.

But out of interest.

We have 1200 Tolkien letters entered, with many hundreds to add, plus new letters that will almost certainly come to light through auctions. There will be new publications, and academic articles using archived letters not currently known to us. I confidently put the total in the guide by 2025 at around 2000.^{With more to add, but knowing the pace so far, that is the range I believe we will be at.[1]}

Carpenter says in Letters that a "very large body of letters he wrote between 1913 and 1918 to Edith Bratt. .... these are highly personal in character, and from them I have chosen only a few passages which refer to writings in which Tolkien was engaged at the time." If Carpenter, who had just prepared a volume which we now know contained 508 letters describes a group of letters as "very large", we can confidently believe that these letters amount into the hundreds. Especially as we know from avavilable letters and details that Tolkien could write three or four letters a week to Edith during that period, but lets be conservative and suggest he wrote two a week. 600 just to Edith. Plus we know that the private family papers contain many more letters from Tolkien. I believe that we can confidently say that 1000 (minimum) exist among the family papers.

Carpenter also says that "between 1918 and 1937 few letters survive" and if we again apply the two letters a week, we know this is very conservative, around 1000 more. I put this number higher, likely to be 1800-2000 as he almost certainly wrote three or four letters a week.

So I think it is fair, and very likely that there are "thousands" of letters. How useful or interesting the content, that is to be decided by each reader of course. But we do know that almost all of Tolkien's letters offer some sort of information which helps build more details on him.

A review in The Sunday Times (but behind a paywall)

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the ... arpenter-review-thcst67pv

Oh, don't misunderstand me -- if a collected letters of JRRT in three fat volumes was announced, I'd order them as soon as I knew about them. It's an adjustment to think of Tolkien as a copious letter writer, but if he wrote them, if they are of interest more than wholly transient, and if we can read them, then great!

Lewis did regret the teeming abundance of his letter obligations sometimes, but you wouldn't think so from the letters he wrote to those strangers. He also liked reading published letters, e.g. those of Cowper and Southey, at least sometimes.

Indeed.Well said

I've written to Harper Collins and they sent a nice reply. To my
specific question on more volumes of Tolkien letters they
said............ 'The Publisher says he’s afraid we can’t comment yet on
anything about more letters being published or even a deluxe edition of
the new book – what happens next will depend on how well this book is
received. But we thank you for your comments and very positive review. So over to you guys to ask Santa for a copy.

Yes,if one becomes available

Dale Nelson wrote:

Oh, don't misunderstand me -- if a collected letters of JRRT in three fat volumes was announced, I'd order them as soon as I knew about them. It's an adjustment to think of Tolkien as a copious letter writer, but if he wrote them, if they are of interest more than wholly transient, and if we can read them, then great!

No misunderstanding Dale you are quite correct that many of Tolkien's letters are of a more 'memo' nature, or at least of less interest to the bigger parts of Tolkien's work. If there appears "three fat volumes" of Tolkien's letters then we have our work cut out on the guide which we welcome.

Olorin, thank you for the update. I agree, you all need to go out and buy extra copies, it is your duty! I have bought the hardcover and Kindle editions but i will certainly have to buy another hardcover for notes, and a later paperback. So I am doing my bit to drain my account!!!