TCG Letter #2599

Philip Unwin writes to Tolkien on the matter of his riddles from The Hobbit. Houghton Mifflin wants to use a poem and the riddles in an anthology but are disputing the costs, claiming that the riddles are traditional. Tolkien will reply (see Carpenter's Letter #110 (J.R.R. Tolkien to Philip Unwin, 20 September 1947)) that all but two are his, and his style is that of an old literary style and not folk-lore as suggested.