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Originally Posted by Bb
The Letters as they stand don't, in my humble opinion, answer a question Squatter raised some years ago in chat: What kept him at it? Why did Tolkien devote so much of his life to the Legendarium, when he had so many other things going on in his life? davem recently repeated this question. While we can speculate--and speculation is our delight--the answer remains an interpretation. There could well be documents "out there"--deliberately playing on the alleged conspiracy theme -- which could shed some light on this question--or rather, which could send us off on other roads not yet explored.
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Or, it could just be that there
is no simple answer to why he spent his life on this work! It might be trite but we
could put it down to being his hobby!
I'd personally like to see more letters on topics I have an interest in, too. But I seriously believe that all known letters of general interest, which would not cause family upset, have been published. No 'image' of Tolkien is being preserved - on the contrary, the letters only muddy the waters about what he believed, what he wanted the work to 'do', if anything, and what sort of man he was.
Child - if the documents are in the Bodleian then its not the 'fault' of the Tolkien family if access is restricted. But bear in mind that access does need to be restricted or
I'd be hot footing it down there to thumb through them, and I have no scholarly interest in Beowulf, though I could
pretend to have. So could a lot of people.
As to why the new version of Beowulf is not available, maybe it is in a rough state and considering Tolkien's reputation as an academic, the estate wishes it to be tidied, made more clear or some other scholarly jiggery-pokery to be done with it before unleashing it on the hard, cruel eyes of other high flying academics who might gossip about it?
Anyway, why are we getting in knots about conspiracies? Just ask the estate!
