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Tolkien Letter to be auctioned on the 12th April

13 March - By Trotter

Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Christopher Howard • 28 December 1961 (#2026)

1961-12-28 Dear Christopher photo.jpg

A touching letter sent by one of the greatest authors of all time to a little boy 63 years ago is expected to spark an auction bidding battle.

During Christmas in 1961 J.R.R. Tolkien, the ‘father of fantasy literature’ and author of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, took time out to write to a young fan.

The letter was sent to Christopher Howard when he was eight years old, above. It was a late and unexpected festive surprise for the amazed and delighted youngster, who took great pleasure showing it to his family, friends and teachers.

After a while the treasured letter was placed in his keepsakes’ box where it has remained for six decades, only coming out about 20 years ago to be digitally scanned. Christopher, 71, a renewable energy consultant from Wye, near Canterbury, Kent, has now decided the time has come to let his incredible letter go.

It will be offered at Hertfordshire Auction House Hanson Ross on April 12 with a guide price of £8,000-£10,000. However, it could exceed expectations. In 2023 a lengthy autograph Tolkien letter, sent to his publisher, achieved a premium inclusive total of $32,500 (£25,671) at auction.

Christopher said: “Back in 1961 we were living in the North West of England at the curious address you can see on the envelope, ‘Asmall Lodge, Asmall Lane, Ormskirk, Lancashire’. My mother was an English teacher who would read bedtime stories to my younger brother and I, and when we were aged six and eight she started reading The Hobbit to us.

“I quickly realised I wanted to read it myself, which I did. The magical effect of reading words that created pictures in my mind amazed me. I could see the dragon, Smaug, in his lair, the Dwarves in their mountain halls, Wizards, Orcs and of course, Hobbits.

“I needed to know if the author had written any more books full of such thrilling adventures, and therefore wrote a letter to him which mum sent to his publisher, George Allen & Unwin. They passed it on to Professor Tolkien, who replied in a letter dated December 28, 1961.

“You can imagine how thrilled I was to receive this letter. Immediately, on seeing the envelope, in my mind Professor Tolkien’s beautiful handwriting transported our home straight to Middle Earth. It became, ‘A small Lodge, A small Lane, Ormskirk, Lancashire’.

“In his reply, he took time to carefully address every point in my letter, referred to my younger brother Nicky, mentioned characters in The Hobbit, and informed me in detail about the other book – or books – he had written, The Lord Of The Rings.”

The lengthy private letter, beautifully hand-written by fountain pen on headed paper, displays Tolkien’s Oxford address – 76 Sandfield Road, Headington – and his phone number.

Amanda Butler, head of operations at Hanson Ross, said: “It’s a wonderful find, a very touching, kind and personal letter. It reminds us of the art of letter-writing in a fast-paced world now dominated by emails and short and snappy text or WhatsApp messages.

“Professor Tolkien was a busy man and yet he found time at Christmas to write this delightful letter to a young fan. It’s hard to imagine any celebrity today composing something so special. The fact that our vendor has treasured the letter for life underlines its importance. It offers us a glimpse of Tolkien’s kindness and integrity and is a welcome reminder of old-fashioned values and courtesy. We very much hope to deliver the auction result it deserves.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (1892-1973) was an English academic, philologist and author of high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From 1925-1945, he was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Oxford. From 1945 to retirement in 1959 he was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, also at the University of Oxford. Tolkien was a close friend of fellow author C. S. Lewis and co-member of informal literary discussion group The Inklings

Though other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit followed by the huge impact of The Lord Of The Rings led to a resurgence of the genre. As a result, he is regarded as the ‘father’ of modern fantasy literature and one of the most influential authors of all time.

Auction: The J.R.R. Tolkien letter will by auctioned on April 12 at Hanson Ross, Royston, Hertfordshire.

https://hansonsauctioneers.co.uk/hobbi ... -to-spark-auction-battle/

Estimate GBP 8,000 - 10,000
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The Collected Poems of J. R. R. Tolkien

12 March - By Urulókë

Announcing today is a huge new collection of Tolkien Poems, to be released in September. More details will be added here as they become available.

tolkien_collected_poems_trial_tp1-2.jpg

Image from HarperCollins, used with permission




  • Press Release

    COLLECTED POEMS OF J.R.R. TOLKIEN TO BE PUBLISHED FOR FIRST TIME

    London, Tuesday 12 March

    HarperCollins has announced it is to publish The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, in September 2024.

    Poetry was the first way in which Tolkien expressed himself creatively and through it the seeds of his literary ambition would be sown. Out of one of his earliest poems, The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star, begun in 1914, would appear the character, Eärendil, and from him would spring the world of ‘the Silmarillion’, and then The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, each of whose stories are enriched with poems both humorous and haunting, magical and moving.

    The world-renowned Tolkien scholars, Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, provide the stories behind, and analysis of, each poem, as well as revealing the extraordinary amount of work that Tolkien devoted to every one, creating a landmark new publication which confirms that J.R.R. Tolkien was as fine a poet as he was a writer.

    Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond say: ‘It has been an honour to prepare, at Christopher Tolkien’s invitation, these volumes of his father’s poems, putting into print many previously unpublished works and ensuring that Tolkien’s talent for poetry becomes more widely known. Charged at first to review only his early poems, we soon saw the benefits of examining his entire poetic opus across six decades, vast though it is with hundreds of printed and manuscript sources, and of showing its evolution with comments in the manner of Christopher’s magisterial History of Middle-earth series. Not long before his death, we were able to send Christopher a trial portion of the book, which he praised as “remarkable and immensely desirable”.’

    Chris Smith, Publishing Director, says: ‘Poetry runs like a vein of mithril through all the books that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote. He delighted in language and storytelling, and the almost 200 poems contained in this collection reveal him at his creative best in verse. Within this new three-volume set, there are worlds in miniature to be discovered and revelled in, populated with unforgettable characters and settings both familiar and full of wonder.’

    The Hobbit was first published in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings in 1954–5. Each has since gone on to become a beloved classic of literature, and an international bestseller in more than 70 languages, collectively selling more than 150,000,000 copies worldwide. Published in 1977, 40 years after The Hobbit first introduced the world to Tolkien’s Middle-earth, The Silmarillion sold more than one million copies in its first year of publication and has gone on to be translated into almost 40 languages. It was the first of seventeen Middle-earth books produced by J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, Christopher, who was his father’s literary executor and who died in 2020, aged 95, after a lifetime dedicated to curating his father’s work for publication.

    Issued by: Philippa Cotton, Publicity Director

    Notes to Editors:

    J.R.R. TOLKIEN was born on 3rd January 1892. After serving in the First World War, he embarked upon a distinguished academic career and was recognized as one of the finest philologists in the world. He is best known as the creator of Middle-earth and author of the classic and extraordinary works of fiction, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. His books have been translated into more than 70 languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide. He died on 2nd September 1973 at the age of 81.

    ABOUT HARPERCOLLINS

    HarperCollins Publishers is the second largest consumer book publisher in the world, with operations in 17 countries. With 200 years of history and more than 120 branded imprints around the world, HarperCollins publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year in 16 languages, and has a print and digital catalog of more than 200,000 titles. Writing across dozens of genres, HarperCollins authors include winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery and Caldecott Medals and the Man Booker Prize. HarperCollins, headquartered in New York, is a subsidiary of News Corp (Nasdaq: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) and can be visited online at corporate.HC.com.

From Amazon (this description has already had multiple corrections pointed out in the press release above and from the editors):
World first publication of the collected poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, spanning almost seven decades of the author’s life and presented in an elegant three-volume hardback boxed set.

J.R.R. Tolkien aspired to be a poet in the first instance, and poetry was part of his creative life no less than his prose, his languages, and his art. Although Tolkien’s readers are aware that he wrote poetry, if only from verses in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, its extent is not well known, and its qualities are underappreciated. Within his larger works of fiction, poems help to establish character and place as well as further the story; as individual works, they delight with words and rhyme. They express his love of nature and the seasons, of landscape and music, and of words. They convey his humour and his sense of wonder.

The earliest work in this collection, written for his beloved, is dated to 1910, when Tolkien was eighteen. More poems would follow during his years at Oxford, some of them very elaborate and eccentric. Those he composed during the First World War, in which he served in France, tend to be concerned not with trenches and battle, but with life, loss, faith, and friendship, his longing for England, and the wife he left behind. Beginning in 1914, elements of his legendarium, ‘The Silmarillion’, began to appear, and the ‘Matter of Middle-earth’ would inspire much of Tolkien’s verse for the rest of his life.

Within The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien almost 200 works are presented across three volumes, including more than 60 that have never before been seen. The poems are deftly woven together with commentary and notes by world-renowned Tolkien scholars Christina Scull & Wayne G. Hammond, placing them in the context of Tolkien’s life and literary accomplishments and creating a poetical biography that is a unique and revealing celebration of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Release: 12 September 2024
ISBN 978-0008628826
Three volume boxed set
Edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond
1500+ pages

Christina and Wanye have published background on how this book came into being on their blog: https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.co ... tolkiens-collected-poems/

From their blog post, we are told the following additional details:
  • "The Amazon UK description gives its extent as 1,368 pages, which is close to the number in our typescript; in fact, the printed text will run to more than 1,500 pages."
  • "There are at least 240 discrete poems, depending on how one distinguishes titles and versions, presented in 195 entries and five appendices. "

Further, in a reply below the editors add the following information:
  • "The best we can say is that among the poems we include, 77 have not been published before in any form, or only a few lines from them have appeared, e.g. in Carpenter's biography."

UK Trade
This site uses affiliate links for which we may be compensated

The Collected Poems of J. R. R. Tolkien

HarperCollins (2024-09-12)


£72.46 Amazon.co.uk (Hardcover) - Availability: Preorderable
€101.16 Amazon.de (Gebundene Ausgabe) - Availability: Preorderable


US Trade
ISBN not available yet, expected to be released September 17, 2024

Deluxe edition
No plans as yet.

UK eBook
This site uses affiliate links for which we may be compensated

The Collected Poems of J. R. R. Tolkien

HarperCollins (2024-09-12)


£45.00 Amazon.co.uk (Kindle Edition) - Availability: Preorderable
€65.28 Amazon.de (Kindle Ausgabe) - Availability: Preorderable


US eBook
No information as yet

Audiobook
No information as yet
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Tolkien signed letter - Heritage Auctions

9 March - By Trotter

Auction Ends 2024 April 5
Historical Manuscripts Signature® Auction #6285
Lot #47245

Tolkien updates a fan on his upcoming work, The Silmarillion
J.R.R. Tolkien Typed Letter Signed. One page, 5 ¾ x 8 ¼ inches (sight), London; March 29, 1973. Letter addressed to "Mr. Giusti," thanking him for his letter and offering an update on the lore included in his upcoming book, The Silmarillion. He writes, "Thank you very much for your charming letter and for your good wishes. The Silmarillion (which is already written but in need of revision) contains, set out in full, all the matter of Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings (hard back edition Vol. III, The Return of the King, pp. 313-314) and also and in particular the legend of Luthien referred to by Aragorn at Weathertop. Please forgive my brevity, but one of the chief obstacles to my works appearing in published form is the weight of my correspondence." Signed, "J.R.R. Tolkien." Matted and framed to an overall size of 10 x 12 ¼ inches.

Tolkien died only six months after sending this letter. Though he insisted that The Silmarillion was written, he did not say that it had been edited. Following his death, his son, Christopher, selected and edited the myths that would be included. The Silmarillion is divided into five parts, of which the fifth and final section discusses the events of The Lord of the Rings.

Condition: Creased along center fold and slightly wrinkled. Not examined outside of the frame. Frame is slightly scuffed.

You should always exercise good judgement and perform appropriate due-diligence when acquiring signed items to ensure that you are satisfied with the provenance and integrity of any item you bid on.

Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Mr. Giusti • 29 March 1973 (#1800)

Current Bid USD 2,500

https://historical.ha.com/itm/autograp ... 37!itemid-6285_18001!wlem
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Forum Auctions

9 March - By Trotter

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 11:00 AM GMT

Forum Auctions, London

Lot 305

Lot305.jpg

Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression, map endpapers, illustrations, frontispiece and 3 colour plates, small ownership inscription on front free endpapers, original cloth, boards lightly bowed, small strip of fading to extremities, otherwise excellent, dust-jacket, some chips and nicks to extremities, light patch of spotting to upper panel, light spotting to flaps and fore-edge, [Hammond A3a], 8vo, 1937 [but 1938].

  • Rare in jacket.

The second impression was the first version of the book to be illustrated in colour: the first impression had two plates only, both of which were uncoloured. A total of 2,300 copies were printed, and some 400 held at the binder's London warehouse were destroyed during the Blitz in November 1940.

Estimate GBP 7,000 - 10,000

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auc ... 4b35de12eb9888c9ef19a6ae8

Lot 306

Lot306.jpg

Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression, map endpapers, illustrations, frontispiece and 3 colour plates, very light toning to endpapers and very faint spotting on half-title and occasionally throughout, original cloth, slight shelf-lean, spine ends neatly repaired, extremities a little rubbed and frayed, light surface toning and marking, still overall an excellent copy, [Hammond A3a], 8vo, 1937 [but 1938].

  • See previous lot for publication details.

Estimate GBP 3,000 - 4,000

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auc ... 4b35de12eb9888c9ef19a6ae8

Lot 307

Lot307.jpg

Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Lord of the Rings, 3 vol., comprising The Fellowship of the Ring, second impression, one or two spots to fore-edge, cloth spine ends faded, dust-jacket, spine browned with large portions of loss to spine affecting text, red ink stain to lower flap, heavy tape repairs along joints and extremities, edges nicked and frayed, rubbed, 1954; The Two Towers, first impression, ink ownership inscription and bookplate on endpapers, first and last few pages foxed, 1954, The Return of the King, first impression with signature mark '4' and sagging text to p.49, ink ownership inscription and bookplate on endpapers, spotting on endpapers and occasionally throughout, heavier to first and last few pages, 1955, first editions, folding maps at end, original cloth, some shelf-lean, spine ends and corners a little bumped and frayed, scattered spotting and staining to covers, [Hammond A5a], 8vo.

Estimate GBP 1,500 - 2,000

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auc ... 4b35de12eb9888c9ef19a6ae8

Lot 308

Lot308.jpg

Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Lord of the Rings, 3 vol., comprising The Fellowship of the Ring, upper hinge cracked, endpapers lightly foxed, cloth a little marked and faded, extremities a little rubbed, second impression dust-jacket without broken 'd' in 'Frodo' on lower flap and untrimmed portrait of the author on lower panel, neatly price-clipped, spine lightly faded, light creasing and rubbing to extremities, 1954; The Two Towers, endpapers lightly foxed, cloth spine a little faded, extremities a little rubbed, third impression dust-jacket spine head repaired with tape verso, chipping to spine tail, spine a little faded, light marking to lower panel, 1955; The Return of the King, cloth fine, jacket with few nicks and tears to edges, 1956, first American editions, first impressions, original cloth, dust-jackets, 8vo, [Hammond A5b], Boston, Houghton Mifflin.

  • The first American edition is considerably scarcer than the first English edition, with few coming up in commerce. Nearly all extant copies of the first impression of The Fellowship of the Ring have been recorded with the first state jacket, with most issued with the second state.

Estimate GBP 4,000 - 6,000

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auc ... 4b35de12eb9888c9ef19a6ae8
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Richard Plotz (1948-2024)

5 March - By Urulókë

Dick Plotz.jpg

https://www.olsonparent.com/obituary/Richard-Plotz

Dick was an awesome friend and OG pillar of the Tolkien community. He will be missed.
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