Gems from the Letters

[Child of the 7th Age]

Lindil --

I am glad that you have begun a thread like this. The Letters are one of my favorite volumes by Tolkien. No matter how many times I pick them up, I find new things. One of the nicest things is that you can read them in 5 or 10-minute chunks, and set them down again until the next few minutes you have free.

If anyone out there hasn't read them, try to pick up a paperback copy. They are definitely worth the money.

Here's one of my all-time favorite quotes which talks about how Tolkien viewed the inspiration behind his writing:

A few years ago I was visited in Oxford by a man whose name I have forgotten (though I believe he was well-known. He had been much struck by the curious way in which many old pictures seemed to him to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time. He brought one or two reproductions. I think he wanted at first simply to discover whether my imagination had fed on pictures, as it clearly had by certain kinds of literature and languages. When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before and was not well acquinted with pictorial Art, he fell silent. I became aware that he was looking fixedly at me. Suddenly he said: 'Of course you don't suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?'

Pure Gandalf! I was too well acquinted with G. to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said: 'No, I don't suppose so any longer.' I have never been able to suppose so. An alarming conclusion for an old philologist to draw concerning his private amusements. But not one that should puff any one up who considers the imperfections of 'chosen instruments', and indeed what seems their unfitness for the purpose. Letters, #328, 1971

sharon, the 7th age hobbit