Christie's Groundbreakers: Icons of our Time Auction

Details

J.R.R. Tolkien's Merton College Desk
Late 19th Century
A mid-Victorian mahogany and satinwood rolltop pedestal desk
The moulded top above the roll top enclosing a fitted interior of five drawers and ten pigeon holes above the pull out writing surface with five simulated drawers, the top inset with three gilt tooled green leather writing surfaces, the central inset an adjustable ratcheted writing slope revealing one compartment, the whole above a moulded frieze with central lock, flanked by two pedestals each with three drawers on a moulded plinth base, the leather writing surfaces with significant damage
46 in. (117 cm.) high; 59 ½ in. (151.5 cm.) wide; 30 in. (76 cm.) deep

The Merton Desk, owned and used by J.R.R. Tolkien during his tenure as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford (1945–1959), was the site of much of the author’s work during his most productive and creative literary period.

Provenance

The property of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), from at least 1955 when pictured in his office at Merton College Oxford, until at least 1959;
from whom acquired directly Dame Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) and John Bayley (1925-2015);
by inheritance to the current owners.

Literature

Getty Images. Picture Post / Haywood Magee photographs (2 December 1955).
P. Conradi, Iris Murdoch: A Life, London, 2001, p. 569 , illustrated, p. 578.
A. N. Wilson, Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her, London, 2003, p. 33.
A. Horner, April, and A. Rowe (eds.), Living on Paper Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995, London, 2015, illustrated, pp. 578-579.

The desk owned and used by J.R.R. Tolkien during his tenure as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford in the 1940s and 1950s comes to auction next month at Christie's' Groundbreakers: Icons of Our Time auction.

He used the roll-top desk during his productive literary period when he was finalising and proofing The Lord of the Rings, and later sold it to novelist Iris Murdoch, probably in the late 1960s. The estimate is £50,000-£80,000.

An earlier desk used by Tolkien to write The Hobbit was given to him by his wife in 1927. He later donated it to the charity Help the Aged who auctioned it, and is now held by the Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois.