Another one bites the dust....

[William Cloud Hicklin]

He basically lifted images, characters and whple scenes -.often without even bothering to change the names (cf the dwarf names in TH)

Pleeze. Lifted "characters" by borrowing 1000-year old names? Care to tell us how Thorin, Bifur, Dori and the rest are "characters" from The Prophecy of the Sybil?

Whole scenes? Really? Anything more substantial than Bilbo's lifting of a cup a la Beowulf?




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A great part of the Estate's remit is quality control. When a book is issued under the JRRT monogram- effectively the Estate's imprimatur - the book can be assumed right off the bat to be *good:* Shippey, Hammond & Scull, Garth, Rateliff: all printed with the Seal of Approval, and all representing the very best in Tolkien scholarship. The Estate doesn't license just any old crap (unlike Zaentz/Wingnut).

The "Mirkwood" novel was tripe, and I cannot blame the Estate for not wanting to provide a Nihil Obstat, any more than I blame them for blocking "sequels" and other fan-fic.

The Estate *did* btw take action against Grotta-Kurska; the original edition contains blank pages marked (very cattily) "redacted for legal reasons"

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The Estate didn't "suppress" the Hilary biography; it withheld permission to use JRRT's letters, after which the authors decided not to publish without them.

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NB: Tolkien didn't invent hobbits? Please don't go back to that Denham Tract stuff....

[Boromir88]

This one (unlike the Zaentz lawsuit) looks fairly clear cut...

Grotta exploited a loophole in the copyright laws of the 70s to get his biography (I hesitate to even use that term...a worthy biographer wouldn't let a personal grudge carry into the biography he's writing) pushed through. Good for him. The loophole no longer exists today...tough luck, but good riddance.

Anyway, the TE may be stingy when it comes to allowing access to certain papers/letters JRRT wrote, but they're excersing legal rights no differently than WB, Disney, Zaentz or anyone else would. And would you let any hack writer access to your own papers (or papers you're the legal guardian of) who wanted it?

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

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A great part of the Estate's remit is quality control. When a book is issued under the JRRT monogram- effectively the Estate's imprimatur - the book can be assumed right off the bat to be *good:* Shippey, Hammond & Scull, Garth, Rateliff: all printed with the Seal of Approval, and all representing the very best in Tolkien scholarship. The Estate doesn't license just any old crap (unlike Zaentz/Wingnut).

The "Mirkwood" novel was tripe, and I commit blame the Estate for not wanting to provide a Nihil Obstat, any more than I blame them for blocking "sequels" and other fan-fic.

The Estate *did* btw take action against Grotta-Kurska; the original edition contains blank pages marked (very cattily) "redacted for legal reasons"

-----------------

The Estate didn't "suppress" the Hilary biography; it withheld permission to use JRRT's letters, after which the authors decided not to publish without them.

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NB: Tolkien didn't invent hobbits? Please don't go back to that Denham Tract stuff....

Pretty dire quality control if you're correct as most of those authors would support my statement that Tolkien drew very liberally on the sources I mentioned. Hammond and Scull's frankly creepy literary stalking job I leave in the gutter-in spite of CT's approval of it. Also, whatever the merits our otherwise of the Mirkwood novel I don't think the estate should have the right to decide whether a book should be published based purely on literary quality.

As for the Hilary bio, my understanding was that they wanted to prevent any reference to events mentioned in the letters, not publication of the texts.

I do like the way you bring in the Denham Tracts as a way of dismissing their use in the argument, when it is the main evidence that Tolkien didn't invent hobbits.

[Boromir88]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

The Estate didn't "suppress" the Hilary biography; it withheld permission to use JRRT's letters, after which the authors decided not to publish without them.

From what I can remember, the Hilary Tolkien biography was a bit more complicated.

Originally the authors (Angela Gardner and Neil Holford) worked with Hilary's family, and got their permission to use correspondences between Hilary and JRRT. Unaware that they needed the Tolkien Estate's permission to use some of the letters, and not Hilary's family.

The authors further attempted to rework their biography in accordance to the wishes of the Estate, and paraphrase when needed to not breach copyright laws. Only until it became abundantly clear the Estate wanted 20 pages completely removed did the authors decide not to publish the Hilary Tolkien biography.

It may seem like nothing "what's 20 pages amongst several hundred?" But everyone has to know you can't just remove 20 pages of material and expect to get the same story, or for the story to hold the same meaning. What would Tolkien's reaction be if I got lawyers to use copyright laws and had The Old Forest chapter (or any assortment of 20 pages) removed from The Fellowship?

As much as I can understand protecting quality and artistic integrity, you really can't make that case with the Hilary Tolkien biography the Estate went after. Gardner and Holford were proper biographers who went through the work, research, and permissions from Hilary's family. And after finding out they needed the Estate's permission to use certain material, they tried to rework the biography in a manner that would respect the Estate's wishes.

I'm afraid that one was a case where the Estate used copyright law to halt the work of two respected authors. Whether it would have been a worthy biography about Hilary Tolkien, well I suppose we won't know, but personally...you can't make the protecting artistic integrity argument and it was unfortunate to see the Estate would use copyright law in that way.

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

From what I can remember, the Hilary Tolkien biography was a bit more complicated.

I'm afraid that one was a case where the Estate used copyright law to halt the work of two respected authors. Whether it would have been a worthy biography about Hilary Tolkien, well I suppose we won't know, but personally...you can't make the protecting artistic integrity argument and it was unfortunate to see the Estate would use copyright law in that way.

No sympathy from me. It is pretty common knowledge that copyright in letters remains with the writer. Any publisher should know that. I also understand that it wasn't the first breach and iirc Christopher's own letter/s had been used.