Another one bites the dust....

[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"

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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....

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.