J. R. R. Tolkien

by Humphrey Carpenter

  On 19 September 1952 Rayner Unwin came to Oxford and collected the typescript of The Lord of the Rings. His father, Sir Stanley Unwin was in Japan, so it was up to Rayner himself to make the next moves. He decided not to delay by rereading the bulky typescript, for he had seen virtually all of it five years earlier, and he still had a vivid impression of the story. Instead he began immediately to obtain an estimate of production costs, for he was concerned to keep the price of the book within the limit to which the ordinary buyer (and the circulating libraries in particular) would go. After calculations and discussions in the Allen & Unwin offices, it seemed that the best thing would be to divide the book into three volumes, which could be sold (with only a small profit margin) at twenty-one shillings each. This was still a lot of money, rather more than the top price for a novel, but it was the best that could be done. Rayner sent a telegram to his father to ask whether they could publish the book, admitting that it was ‘a big risk’ and warning that the firm could lose up to a thousand pounds through the project. But he concluded that in his opinion it was a work of genius. Sir Stanley replied by cable, telling him to publish it.

  On 10 November 1952 Rayner Unwin wrote to Tolkien to say that the firm would like to publish The Lord of the Rings under a profit-sharing agreement. This meant that Tolkien would not receive conventional royalty payments on a percentage basis. Instead he would be paid ‘half profits’ that is, he would receive nothing until the sales of the book had been sufficient to cover its costs, but thenceforward he would share equally with the publisher in any profits that might accrue. This method, which had once been common practice but was by this time little used by other firms, was still favoured by Sir Stanley Unwin for all potentially uneconomical books. It helped to keep down the price of such books, since there was no need to include an additional sum in the costing to cover the author’s royalties. On the other hand if the book sold unexpectedly well, the author would benefit more substantially than under a royalty agreement. Not that Allen & Unwin expected The Lord of the Rings to sell more than a few thousand copies, for it was bulky, unconventional, and did not appeal to any one ‘market’ being neither a children’s book nor an adult novel.

  The news soon spread among Tolkien’s friends that the book had at last been accepted for publication. C. S. Lewis wrote to congratulate him, remarking: ‘I think the prolonged pregnancy has drained a little vitality from you: there’ll be a new ripeness and freedom when the book’s out.’ At that particular moment Tolkien felt anything but free. He wanted to read the typescript of the book once more before it went to the printers, and to iron out any remaining inconsistencies. (Fortunately Rayner Unwin had not asked him to make any cuts, such as Milton Waldman had suggested.) There was also the tricky matter of the appendices to the book, which he had planned for some time; they were to contain information that was relevant to the story but which could not be fitted into the narrative. As yet these appendices existed only in the form of rough drafts and scattered notes, and he could see that it would take a great deal of time to organise them. He was also worried about the necessity of making a clear and accurate map to accompany the book, for a number of topographical and narrative changes had rendered the working map (drawn by Christopher many years before) inaccurate and inadequate. Besides all this, he had a backlog of many years’ academic work on hand which he could no longer ignore. And he had decided to move house yet again.

  The house in Holywell Street, where the Tolkiens had lived since 1950, was a building of much character, but it was made almost unbearable by the stream of motor traffic that roared past it all day and much of the night. ‘This charming house,’ Tolkien wrote, ‘has become uninhabitable: unsleepable-in, unworkable-in, rocked, racked with noise, and drenched with fumes. Such is modern life. Mordor in our midst.’ He and Edith were now on their own, Priscilla having left Oxford to work in Bristol; and Edith had become very lame from rheumatism and arthritis, so that she found the many stairs in the house troublesome. By the spring of 1953 Tolkien had found and bought a house in Headington, a quiet Oxford suburb to the east of the city. He and Edith moved there in March.

  Despite the dislocation caused by the move, Tolkien managed to complete his final revision for what was to be the first volume of The Lord of the Rings by mid-April, and he sent it to Allen & Unwin for typesetting to begin. Soon afterwards he delivered the text of the second volume. He had already discussed with Rayner Unwin the question of independent titles for the three volumes, which Unwin considered preferable to an overall title with volume numbers. Although the book was one continuous story and not a trilogy – a point that Tolkien was always concerned to emphasise – it was felt that it would be best if it appeared volume by volume under different titles, thus earning three sets of reviews rather than one, and perhaps disguising the sheer size of the book. Tolkien was never entirely happy about the division, and he insisted on retaining The Lord of the Rings as the overall title. But after a good deal of discussion he and Rayner eventually agreed upon The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King for the volume titles, though Tolkien really preferred ‘The War of the Ring’ for the third volume, as it gave away less of the story.

  The ‘production’ problems that Tolkien now encountered were similar to those he had met with in The Hobbit. He cared very much that his beloved book should be published as he had intended, but once again many of his designs were modified, frequently through considerations of cost. Among items that were declared to be too expensive were red ink for the ‘fire-letters’ which appear on the Ring, and the halftone colour process that would be necessary to reproduce the facsimile Tolkien had made of ‘The Book of Mazarbul’ a burnt and tattered volume that (in the story) is found in the Mines of Moria. He was much saddened by this, for he had spent many hours making this facsimile, copying out the pages in runes and elvish writing, and then deliberately damaging them, burning the edges and smearing the paper with substances that looked like dried blood. All this work was now wasted.1 He was also infuriated by his first sight of the proofs, for he found that the printers had changed several of his spellings, altering dwarves to dwarfs, elvish to elfish, further to farther, and (‘worst of all’ said Tolkien) elvin to elfin. The printers were reproved; they said in self-defence that they had merely followed the dictionary spellings. (Similar ‘corrections’ to Tolkien’s spellings were made in 1961 when Puffin Books issued The Hobbit as a paperback, and this time to Tolkien’s distress the mistake was not discovered until the book had reached the shops.) Another worry was the matter of the map, still not dealt with; or rather the maps, for an additional plan of the Shire was now thought to be necessary. ‘I am stumped,’ Tolkien wrote in October 1953. ‘Indeed in a panic. They are essential; and urgent; but I just cannot get them done.’ In the end he handed over the job to his original map-maker, Christopher, who somehow managed to interpret his father’s overlaid, altered, and often contradictory rough sketches, and to produce from them a readable and neatly lettered general map and smaller plan of the Shire.

  The first volume of The Lord of the Rings was to be published in the summer of 1954, and the remaining two volumes were to follow one by one after short intervals. There was only a modest print order: three and a half thousand copies of the first volume and slightly fewer of the other two, for the publishers considered that this should be enough to cater for the moderate interest the book was expected to attract. As to publicity, Rayner Unwin had panicked at the thought of writing a ‘blurb’ for the dust-jacket of the book, for it defied conventional description. So he and his father solicited the help of three authors who were likely to have something worth saying about it: Naomi Mitchison, who was a devotee of The Hobbit, Richard Hughes, who had long ago praised the first book, and C. S. Lewis. All three responded with fluent words of commendation, Mrs Mitchison comparing The Lord of the Rings with science-fiction and Malory, and Lewis drawing a parallel with Ariosto. (‘I don’t know Ariosto,’ Tolkien once said, ‘and I’d lo
athe him if I did.’)

  Publication day for the first volume approached. It was more than sixteen years since Tolkien had begun to write the book. ‘I am dreading the publication,’ he told his friend Father Robert Murray, ‘for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.’

  1 Pages from ‘The Book of Mazarbul’ were eventually reproduced in the ‘Tolkien Calendar’ for 1977.

  CHAPTER III

  CASH OR KUDOS

  ‘This book is like lightning from a clear sky. To say that in it heroic romance, gorgeous, eloquent, and unashamed, has suddenly returned at a period almost pathological in its anti-romanticism, is inadequate. To us, who live in that odd period, the return – and the sheer relief of it – is doubtless the important thing. But in the history of Romance itself – a history which stretches back to the Odyssey and beyond – it makes not a return but an advance or revolution: the conquest of new territory.’ This review of The Fellowship of the Ring (the first volume of The Lord of the Rings) appeared in Time & Tide on 14 August 1954, a few days after the book had been published. Its author was C. S. Lewis.

  Perhaps it was a little excessive for Lewis to contribute to the publisher’s ‘blurb’ and also to review the book, but he wanted to do everything in his power to help Tolkien; though before sending his contribution for the ‘blurb’ to Rayner Unwin he had warned Tolkien: ‘Even if he and you approve my words, think twice before using them: I am certainly a much, and perhaps an increasingly, hated man whose name might do you more harm than good.’ Prophetic words, for more than one critic reviewing the book in August 1954 displayed an extraordinary personal animosity to Lewis, and used (or wasted) a good deal of space in mocking Lewis’s comparison of Tolkien to Ariosto. Edwin Muir wrote in the Observer. ‘Nothing but a great masterpiece could survive the bombardment of praise directed at it from the blurb,’ and although Muir admitted enjoying the book he declared that he was disappointed with the ‘lack of the human discrimination and depth which the subject demanded. Mr Tolkien,’ continued Muir, ‘describes a tremendous conflict between good and evil, on which hangs the future of life on earth. But his good people are consistently good, his evil figures immutably evil; and he has no room in his world for a Satan both evil and tragic.’ (Mr Muir had evidently forgotten Gollum, evil, tragic, and very nearly redeemed.) Several critics carped at Tolkien’s prose style, among them Peter Green in the Daily Telegraph who wrote that it ‘veers from pre-Raphaelite to Boy’s Own Paper’ while J. W. Lambert in the Sunday Times declared that the story has two odd characteristics: ‘no religious spirit of any kind, and to all intents and purposes no women’ (neither statement was entirely fair, but both were reflected in later writings by other critics). Yet for all these harsh judgements there were many who were enthusiastic, and even among the mockers there were some who were drawn to commendation. Green in the Telegraph had to admit that the book ‘has an undeniable fascination’ while Lambert in the Sunday Times wrote: ‘Whimsical drivel with a message? No; it sweeps along with a narrative and pictorial force which lifts it above that level.’ Perhaps the wisest remark came from the Oxford Times reviewer who declared: ‘The severely practical will have no time for it. Those who have imagination to kindle will find themselves completely carried along, becoming part of the eventful quest and regretting that there are only two more books to come.’

  The reviews were good enough to promote sales, and it soon became clear that the three and a half thousand copies that had been printed of the first volume would be insufficient to meet the demand. Six weeks after publication, a reprint was ordered. Tolkien himself wrote: ‘As for the reviews, they were a good deal better than I feared.’ In July he had visited Dublin to receive an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the National University of Ireland. He went overseas again in October to be given another honorary degree, at Liège, and these and other calls on his time delayed his work on the appendices for The Lord of the Rings. The printers had already set up the type for the text of the third volume, from which Tolkien had now decided to omit the somewhat sentimental epilogue that dealt with Sam and his family. But the third volume could not be printed until the appendices arrived, as well as the enlarged map of Gondor and Mordor that Tolkien now felt to be required, and the index of names that he had promised in the preface to the first volume.

  The second volume, The Two Towers, was published in mid-November. Reviews were similar in tone to those of the first volume. The third volume was now eagerly awaited by the supporting faction, for the story had broken off with Frodo imprisoned in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, and as the reviewer in the Illustrated London News declared. ‘The suspense is cruel.’ Meanwhile the deadline that Allen & Unwin had set for the delivery of the appendices passed without any manuscript arriving at their office. ‘I am dreadfully sorry,’ Tolkien wrote. ‘I have been trying hard.’ And he did manage to send some of the material to the publishers shortly afterwards; some, but not all.

  In America, Houghton Mifflin had published The Fellowship of the Ring in October; The Two Towers followed shortly after. American reviews of the first two volumes were on the whole cautious. But enthusiastic articles by W. H. Auden in the New York Times – ‘No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy,’ wrote Auden – helped to boost sales, and during the following year a large number of copies were bought by American readers.

  By January 1955, two months after the publication of the second volume, Tolkien had still not completed the appendices that were required so urgently. He had abandoned any hope of making an index of names, having found that the job would take too long. Freed of this burden, he completed more material during January and February, but he found the task maddeningly difficult. He had at one time planned to fill an entire ‘specialist volume’ with details of the history and linguistics of his mythological peoples, and he had amassed a great deal of notes on these topics. But now he had to compress everything, for the publishers could only give him a short space at the end of the book. However, he pressed on, spurred by the letters he was already receiving from readers who took the book almost as history, and demanded more information on many topics. This attitude to his story flattered him, for it was the type of response that he had hoped to arouse, yet he remarked: ‘I am not at all sure that the tendency to treat this whole thing as a kind of vast game is really good – certainly not for me, who find that kind of thing only too fatally attractive.’ Nevertheless it was encouraging to know that the material he was so laboriously preparing on the Shire Calendars, the Rulers of Gondor, and the Tengwar of Fëanor would be read voraciously by a large number of people.

  The appendices were still unfinished by March, and strongly-worded letters began to arrive at the offices of Allen & Unwin, complaining about the non-appearance of the third volume. It was clear to the publishers that the book was arousing more than the usual interest for fiction. Rayner Unwin pleaded with Tolkien to get the work done, but it was not until 20 May that the final copy for the appendices reached the printers. The last map, prepared by Christopher, who had worked for twenty-four hours non-stop to finish it, had been sent some weeks before; so now there should be no more delays. But there were. First the chart of runes was printed wrongly, and Tolkien had to make corrections. Then other queries were raised by the printers and forwarded to Tolkien to be answered; but by this time he had gone on holiday to Italy.

  He made the journey by boat and train with Priscilla, while Edith went on a Mediterranean cruise with three friends. He kept a diary, and recorded his feeling of having ‘come to the heart of Christendom: an exile from the borders and far provinces returning home, or at least to the home of his fathers’. In Venice among the canals he found himself ‘almost free of the cursed disease of the internal combustion engine of which all the world is dying’ and he wrote afterwards: ‘Venice seemed incredibly, elvishly lovely – to me like a dream of Old Gondor, or Pelargir of the Numenorean Ships, before the return of the Shadow.’ He and Pris
cilla travelled on to Assisi, where the queries from the printers reached him, but he could not deal with them until he was reunited with his notes on his return to Oxford. So it was not until 20 October, almost a year after the publication of The Two Towers, that The Return of the King reached the bookshops. A note on the last page apologised for the absence of the promised index.

  Now that all three volumes had appeared, the critics were able to make a full assessment of The Lord of the Rings. C. S. Lewis paid another tribute in Time & Tide: ‘The book is too original and too opulent for any final judgement on a first reading. But we know at once that it has done things to us. We are not quite the same men.’ A new voice was added to the chorus of praise when Bernard Levin wrote in Truth that he believed it to be ‘one of the most remarkable works of literature in our, or any, time. It is comforting, in this troubled day, to be once more assured that the meek shall inherit the earth’. But there were further criticisms of the style. John Metcalf wrote in the Sunday Times: ‘Far too often Mr Tolkien strides away into a kind of Brewers’ Biblical, enwreathed with inversions, encrusted with archaisms’ and Edwin Muir returned to the attack in a review in the Observer headed ‘A Boy’s World’. The astonishing thing,’ he wrote, ‘is that all the characters are boys masquerading as adult heroes. The hobbits, or halflings, are ordinary boys; the fully human heroes have reached the fifth form; but hardly one of them knows anything about women, except by hearsay. Even the elves and the dwarfs and the ents are boys, irretrievably, and will never come to puberty.’

  ‘Blast Edwin Muir and his delayed adolescence,’ snorted Tolkien. ‘He is old enough to know better. If he had an M.A. I should nominate him for the professorship of poetry – sweet revenge.’