Another one bites the dust....

[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.