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Typed letter signed (‘J.R.R. Tolkien’) to Miss Julie Cape, Oxford, 17 February 1963
Details
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973)
Typed letter signed (‘J.R.R. Tolkien’) to Miss Julie Cape, Oxford, 17 February 1963
One page, 252 x 202mm (two small holes at folds). Envelope. Provenance: RR Auctions, 9 November 2011, lot 655; Hermitage Fine Art, Monaco, 17 June 2021, lot 834.
Leaving behind the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings for the Silmarillion. ‘Thank you very much for your nice letter. I was very pleased that you wrote to tell me you enjoyed The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. As for writing more about the same characters, I have written almost all there is to write about them. But I hope you will recognize some of the characters in another book I am busy writing, called The Silmarillion, which I hope will soon be finished. Please give my best wishes to your family and sister, it sounds as if I have many friends amongst them’.
Following the enormous success of The Hobbit (1937), Tolkien was pressed by his publisher for sequel. He set aside the largely written but unfinished Silmarillion to begin work on what was to become The Lord of the Rings (1954). The Silmarillion manuscript continued to grow, as Tolkien imagined in greater detail the earlier history of Middle-earth and introduced some of the key characters from the LOTR, but would remain unpublished on his death, in spite of the hopes expressed here. It was left to his son, Christopher Tolkien, to edit and bring the work to publication in 1977.
Typed letter signed (‘J.R.R. Tolkien’) to Miss Julie Cape, Oxford, 17 February 1963
One page, 252 x 202mm (two small holes at folds). Envelope. Provenance: RR Auctions, 9 November 2011, lot 655; Hermitage Fine Art, Monaco, 17 June 2021, lot 834.
Leaving behind the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings for the Silmarillion. ‘Thank you very much for your nice letter. I was very pleased that you wrote to tell me you enjoyed The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. As for writing more about the same characters, I have written almost all there is to write about them. But I hope you will recognize some of the characters in another book I am busy writing, called The Silmarillion, which I hope will soon be finished. Please give my best wishes to your family and sister, it sounds as if I have many friends amongst them’.
Following the enormous success of The Hobbit (1937), Tolkien was pressed by his publisher for sequel. He set aside the largely written but unfinished Silmarillion to begin work on what was to become The Lord of the Rings (1954). The Silmarillion manuscript continued to grow, as Tolkien imagined in greater detail the earlier history of Middle-earth and introduced some of the key characters from the LOTR, but would remain unpublished on his death, in spite of the hopes expressed here. It was left to his son, Christopher Tolkien, to edit and bring the work to publication in 1977.
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