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Lot Essay
As one of two desks known to have belonged to the author, and the only one in private hands, it constitutes one of the most important artefacts of Tolkien’s career that is ever likely to be offered for sale.
A set of images taken by Picture Post photographer Haywood Magee on 2 December 1955, weeks after the publication of the final work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, shows Tolkien in his book-lined Merton College study seated beside the desk, pipe in hand, a lamp atop its upper shelf illuminating his working space while keeping in shadow the various loose papers and documents that filled its many niches. While the initial composition of The Lord of the Rings, which, according to Tolkien’s own recollection, was largely typed at home: ‘on my bed in an attic’ (Letters, no. 257), the Merton desk would likely have been used in the later stages of the work’s revision—during proof corrections, and extensive correspondence that accompanied its publication in 1954–55. Carpenter describes Tolkien at this time as ‘balancing his typewriter on his attic bed because there was no room on his desk’, but by the mid-1950s, the Merton study had become his principal professional workspace. There it is likely he managed the proofs of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, while continuing academic duties and the correspondence that followed the trilogy’s success. Indeed, The Companion and Guide (Chronology I, pp. 586–601) documents numerous letters from this period written from ‘the Merton Professor’s Room’, confirming that the roll-top formed part of his daily scholarly and editorial practice. The Merton desk thus occupies a pivotal position in Tolkien’s career as the site of his final touches to his masterwork: it connects the imaginative world of the early drafts with the formal apparatus of publication — proofs, galleys, correspondence, etc.
Upon his retirement in 1959, Tolkien vacated his Merton College rooms and relocated the Merton study’s contents, including the desk, to his home at 76 Sandfield Road, Headington. At Sandfield Road, the desk continued to serve as his work station during a productive decade in which he prepared The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962), Tree and Leaf (1964), and Smith of Wootton Major (1967). Biographical and editorial records indicate that Tolkien used this workspace not only for creative writing but for correspondence and ongoing linguistic and philological research, notably in Middle English texts such as Ancrene Wisse. It was only later in 1968, when Tolkien and his wife Edith moved from Oxford to Bournemouth, that it left his ownership, being sold to famed British author and philosopher Dame Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) and her husband, John Bayley (1925–2015).
Murdoch and Tolkien held a clear mutual respect for one another that later developed into a friendship. Indeed, on January 1965 Tolkien wrote to his son Michael that he had received ‘a warm fan-letter from Iris Murdoch’, and Wilson reports that she ‘read and reread The Lord of the Rings, enjoying detailed conversations about it with its author, or with Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son’. This initial admiration turned into a well-documented correspondence and the two authors continued to exchange ideas and thoughts on the literature of the day as well as comments on each other’s work. It is highly probable that this exchange of letters was written by Murdoch again at the present desk. A. N. Wilson, in Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her (2003, p. 224), states that the desk ‘was already in the house when I first knew her, around 1969’, and Murdoch’s own correspondence confirms the association. In Living on Paper: Letters of Iris Murdoch 1934–1995 (ed. Horner and Rowe, 2015), a photograph shows her seated at the roll-top desk, accompanied by the caption: ‘Sitting near the window at a roll-top desk that once belonged to J. R. R. Tolkien, she settled to write her letters’.
As a material witness, the Merton desk anchors Tolkien’s creative and professional life at its most public and productive phase. From the revision and proofing of The Lord of the Rings through to the later works that consolidated his reputation, the desk embodies the intersection of scholarship and creativity characteristic of Tolkien’s career. Its subsequent use by Iris Murdoch extends its celebrated history into a second strand of modern British literature, reaffirming its importance as a monument of literary exchange, and of the everyday material conditions under which major works of the twentieth century were shaped.
Christie’s is grateful to Pieter Collier for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
H. Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. London, 1977.
J. R. R . Tolkien, Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien. London, 1981.
P. J. Conradi, Iris Murdoch: A Life, London, 2001.
A. N. Wilson, Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her. London, 2003.
J. D. Rateliff, The History of The Hobbit, London, 2007.
A. Zettersten, 'Discussing Language with J. R. R. Tolkien', Lembas Extra, 2007, pp.15-25.
C. Duriez, Tolkien and The Making of a Legend, London, 2012.
I. Murdoch, Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch, 1934–1995, Princeton, 2015.
W.G. Hammond and C. Scull, The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide and Chronology, London, 2017.
Exeter College Oxford, Tolkien in Oxford College pamphlet, Oxford, 2018.
Tolkien Society, 'Biography of J. R. R. Tolkien', https://www.tolkiensociety.org.
Tolkien Guide Letters Database. https://www.tolkienguide.com/guide/letters/.
A set of images taken by Picture Post photographer Haywood Magee on 2 December 1955, weeks after the publication of the final work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, shows Tolkien in his book-lined Merton College study seated beside the desk, pipe in hand, a lamp atop its upper shelf illuminating his working space while keeping in shadow the various loose papers and documents that filled its many niches. While the initial composition of The Lord of the Rings, which, according to Tolkien’s own recollection, was largely typed at home: ‘on my bed in an attic’ (Letters, no. 257), the Merton desk would likely have been used in the later stages of the work’s revision—during proof corrections, and extensive correspondence that accompanied its publication in 1954–55. Carpenter describes Tolkien at this time as ‘balancing his typewriter on his attic bed because there was no room on his desk’, but by the mid-1950s, the Merton study had become his principal professional workspace. There it is likely he managed the proofs of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, while continuing academic duties and the correspondence that followed the trilogy’s success. Indeed, The Companion and Guide (Chronology I, pp. 586–601) documents numerous letters from this period written from ‘the Merton Professor’s Room’, confirming that the roll-top formed part of his daily scholarly and editorial practice. The Merton desk thus occupies a pivotal position in Tolkien’s career as the site of his final touches to his masterwork: it connects the imaginative world of the early drafts with the formal apparatus of publication — proofs, galleys, correspondence, etc.
Upon his retirement in 1959, Tolkien vacated his Merton College rooms and relocated the Merton study’s contents, including the desk, to his home at 76 Sandfield Road, Headington. At Sandfield Road, the desk continued to serve as his work station during a productive decade in which he prepared The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962), Tree and Leaf (1964), and Smith of Wootton Major (1967). Biographical and editorial records indicate that Tolkien used this workspace not only for creative writing but for correspondence and ongoing linguistic and philological research, notably in Middle English texts such as Ancrene Wisse. It was only later in 1968, when Tolkien and his wife Edith moved from Oxford to Bournemouth, that it left his ownership, being sold to famed British author and philosopher Dame Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) and her husband, John Bayley (1925–2015).
Murdoch and Tolkien held a clear mutual respect for one another that later developed into a friendship. Indeed, on January 1965 Tolkien wrote to his son Michael that he had received ‘a warm fan-letter from Iris Murdoch’, and Wilson reports that she ‘read and reread The Lord of the Rings, enjoying detailed conversations about it with its author, or with Christopher Tolkien, the author’s son’. This initial admiration turned into a well-documented correspondence and the two authors continued to exchange ideas and thoughts on the literature of the day as well as comments on each other’s work. It is highly probable that this exchange of letters was written by Murdoch again at the present desk. A. N. Wilson, in Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her (2003, p. 224), states that the desk ‘was already in the house when I first knew her, around 1969’, and Murdoch’s own correspondence confirms the association. In Living on Paper: Letters of Iris Murdoch 1934–1995 (ed. Horner and Rowe, 2015), a photograph shows her seated at the roll-top desk, accompanied by the caption: ‘Sitting near the window at a roll-top desk that once belonged to J. R. R. Tolkien, she settled to write her letters’.
As a material witness, the Merton desk anchors Tolkien’s creative and professional life at its most public and productive phase. From the revision and proofing of The Lord of the Rings through to the later works that consolidated his reputation, the desk embodies the intersection of scholarship and creativity characteristic of Tolkien’s career. Its subsequent use by Iris Murdoch extends its celebrated history into a second strand of modern British literature, reaffirming its importance as a monument of literary exchange, and of the everyday material conditions under which major works of the twentieth century were shaped.
Christie’s is grateful to Pieter Collier for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
H. Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. London, 1977.
J. R. R . Tolkien, Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien. London, 1981.
P. J. Conradi, Iris Murdoch: A Life, London, 2001.
A. N. Wilson, Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her. London, 2003.
J. D. Rateliff, The History of The Hobbit, London, 2007.
A. Zettersten, 'Discussing Language with J. R. R. Tolkien', Lembas Extra, 2007, pp.15-25.
C. Duriez, Tolkien and The Making of a Legend, London, 2012.
I. Murdoch, Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch, 1934–1995, Princeton, 2015.
W.G. Hammond and C. Scull, The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide and Chronology, London, 2017.
Exeter College Oxford, Tolkien in Oxford College pamphlet, Oxford, 2018.
Tolkien Society, 'Biography of J. R. R. Tolkien', https://www.tolkiensociety.org.
Tolkien Guide Letters Database. https://www.tolkienguide.com/guide/letters/.