by Stuart Kells
The Smithsonian—‘America’s attic’ or Kunstkabinett or mathom house—contains an excellent collection of rocket science books, including rocket pop-ups and sci-fi pulps. The Folger Shakespeare Library, though, is the place to go to see the first book in English to suggest gunpowder as a rocket propellant. ‘Murtagh McDermot’ (a pseudonym) dedicated his 1728 novel A Trip to the Moon to Lemuel Gulliver. The book tells a remarkable tale. While climbing the peak of Teneriffe, the narrator is caught in a whirlwind—Dorothy-leaving-Kansas style—and elevated beyond the earth’s gravitational pull. Suspended between earth and moon, he fears starvation, but weather again comes into play when he is rescued by a hailstorm. The spaceman has the good fortune to fall into a lunar fishpond, in which the moon king’s fisherman hooks the traveller’s buttonhole.
The narrator solves the problem of terrestrial re-entry by using a crude form of rocketry. He places himself inside ten concentric wooden tubs, the outermost strongly hooped with iron, and blows himself off the moon with the 7000 barrels of gunpowder he’d buried under his tubs. Again reaching the mid point between the moon’s and the earth’s attraction, he crawls from his cockpit, puts on his wings, and follows a flock of migrating birds to Africa. In Guinea he boards a ship bound for Europe, and ultimately returns to Ireland. ‘Even for a daring Irishman, the trip was difficult.’ A whirlwind, the narrator remarks, ‘is not the easiest Vehicle; and being blow’d up is but little better’.
For more than a century, science fiction has supplied marvellous visions of future libraries. But the two most marvellous fantasy libraries are pictures of the past.
Author, scholar and bibliophile Umberto Eco assembled a private library of more than 40,000 volumes, which he stored, Heber-style, in multiple homes in Milan and elsewhere. His academic career centred on the study of words, books and libraries. At the age of sixteen he explored the Gothic and Romanesque cloisters of a Benedictine monastery. In the monks’ library he found, open on a lectern, the Acta Sanctorum. Therein he read of his namesake, Saint Umberto, the bishop who converted a lion in a forest. Leafing through the folio ‘in supreme silence, amid shafts of light entering through opaque windows that were almost grooved into the walls and ended in pointed arches’, Eco had an epiphany that ultimately led him to create the most captivating library in fiction: the abbey library of the Benedictine monastery in his debut novel, The Name of the Rose.
The library is the heart of the book and the fulcrum for its plot. To picture the library, Eco studied and drew hundreds of library plans, abbey plans, mirror galleries and mazes—Greek, rhizome, mannerist, imaginary. The floor labyrinth of Rheims cathedral was one of several especially helpful benchmarks. Known today only from drawings and paintings, that labyrinth was in the shape of an octagon, and had a smaller octagon in each corner, similar in shape to a corner tower. (Canon Jacquemart destroyed the maze in the eighteenth century, allegedly because he was annoyed by children playing there, seeking out the pathways during services.) Particular inspiration also came from Durham Cathedral, Yale’s Sterling Library, the monastery of Bobbio, the monolithic St Michael’s Abbey in the mountainous Susa Valley, Piedmont and St Gall’s ninth-century plan of the ideal monastery and library.
When constructing the abbey library, Eco also had in mind Borges’s infinite library. Two years before The Name of the Rose, Eco wrote the entry for ‘Codice’ (Codex) in the Einaudi Encyclopaedia; the entry includes what Eco called ‘an experiment on the Library of Babel’. His interest in Borges became a benign obsession. As finally conceived, the abbey library in The Name of the Rose resembles in many respects Borges’s infinite library of interconnected hexagonal rooms. Eco would give his mediaeval library a blind librarian, and name him ‘Jorge da Burgos’.
When Eco finally began writing the novel in March 1978, a seminal, homicidal idea was in his mind: ‘I felt like poisoning a monk.’ Influenced by Conan Doyle and the English detective novel tradition, Eco was fascinated by the idea of a monk absorbing a fatal toxin while reading a book in the library. He asked a biologist friend to suggest a compound that could be absorbed by the skin when handled. The biologist knew of no such poison, and Eco promptly tore up his friend’s letter of reply: ‘it was a document that, read in another context, could lead to the gallows.’
Some of the book’s first readers were confounded by the untranslated strings of Latin text. Others were confused by the book’s apparent seriousness and genre transcendence. The great majority of readers, though, saw the book for what it was: an intelligent re-take on the mystery genre, set in a mediaeval world of striking verisimilitude, and containing the most enchanting library ever captured in words,
the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.
Situating the story and the large library in the late Middle Ages made sense; collections were larger at that time than they had been for most of the mediaeval period. But the library still attracted charges of anachronism. The ‘larger’ late mediaeval libraries were not very large: the Sorbonne’s collection, for example, one of the world’s largest in the late Middle Ages, numbered only 1720 volumes in 1332. The number of volumes in Eco’s abbey library was an order of magnitude larger: 87,000 volumes, a figure that drew criticism from mediaevalists who, as Polastron noted, ‘could not help but denounce the heresies of Eco’s novel.’ The number of manuscripts would have required at least eight million calves and all the world’s copyists working for two generations. ‘Nevertheless, dream and fantasy laugh at accountants.’
Tolkien, like Eco, was a mediaeval scholar. He built much of his academic reputation by editing, translating and reinterpreting early texts such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Both Tolkien and Eco were enthralled by early libraries, and by mazes. Both were influenced by Borges. Both, like Borges, wove rich fantasies and were meticulous ‘world builders’. They shared a love of philology; they wrote in multiple languages, they played with the texture of words and, when their novels appeared, each took pains to help translators render their texts into other tongues. When it came to ornamenting their fictional worlds, both Tolkien and Eco created awe-inspiring libraries.
Tolkien’s works are set in the most exquisitely realised and enduringly appealing fantasy world. Middle-earth is a land of Hobbits, dragons and goblins. It is also a land of libraries. Tolkien invented languages, and he invented books and libraries in which to house them. Intricately wrought by their creator, Middle-earth’s libraries come in many different forms. Collections of books are housed in towers, citadels, studies, treasuries, strongrooms and bedrooms. Tolkien’s fiction is a sustained hymn to bibliophilia.
Occupying a pleasant region called the Shire, Hobbits are one of the most bookish races in Middle-earth. Smaller even than most Dwarves, they are genetically human and culturally have much in common with the normal-sized inhabitants of human communities far to the east and southeast. A key difference, though, apart from their height, is that most Hobbits live underground, in neatly excavated and fitted out hillside homes called ‘smials’.
A clever and nimble-fingered people, Hobbits are naturally capable scribes, zealous conservators and talented craftsmen. In Middle-earth’s tumultuous Third Age it is Shire Hobbits who shelter and nurture the noble arts of making and preserving books—just as Irish and Scottish monks did in our dark ages. Hobbit book-craft peaks early in the Fourth Age, partly as a result of the involvement of Shire folk in the War of the Ring, and partly as a result of the long peace brought about by the war. The Red Book of Westmarch, Herblore of the Shire and The Tale of Years all date from that period.
The famous Hobbit Bilbo Baggins keeps his book collection in his study. His home, Bag End, is one of the finest smials ever to be dug, and the study is the best room at Bag End. It has everything a civ
ilised Hobbit could ever need: panelled walls, a tiled floor, carpet, fireplace, polished table and chairs, bookshelves, a wooden strongbox and a single, deep-set, round window that overlooks the garden, the meadows and the river beyond. The study window is curtained and shuttered to control the light. Bilbo stores in the strongbox his most valuable books and his own works-in-progress. The rest of his books are kept in the shelves. These are built low, because Hobbits are afraid of heights and will never climb a ladder to reach a book.
Hobbit books have leather covers, most of which are brightly coloured. An example is The Red Book of Westmarch. Unlike Mao’s book, the hobbitish Red Book is large—and enormous in Shire terms. Like the Codice Atlantico, it consists of multiple folio volumes. It is an account of the end of the Third Age and a record of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins’s adventures with the One Ring. The book’s title is suitably long. Bilbo called the first part of The Red Book ‘My Diary. My Unexpected Journey. There and Back Again. And What Happened After. Adventures of Five Hobbits. The Tale of the Great Ring, compiled by Bilbo Baggins from his own observations and the accounts of his friends. What we did in the War of the Ring’. Bilbo’s nephew Frodo Baggins then crossed out the old title and added ‘THE DOWNFALL OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND THE RETURN OF THE KING (as seen by the Little People; being the memoirs of Bilbo and Frodo of the Shire, supplemented by the accounts of their friends and the learning of the Wise.) Together with extracts from Books of Lore translated by Bilbo in Rivendell’.
Bilbo’s own books are all uniformly bound. The four he authored are precisely the same height, and bound in the same style, in the same colour leather. Bilbo’s book collection is a scaled down model of an English gentleman’s library—as befits the status of Bag End: an English country house in miniature, and underground.
The largest Shire libraries are at Undertowers, Great Smials and Brandy Hall. Undertowers is the home of the Wardens of Westmarch. Great Smials, in Tuckborough, is the mansion of the extended Took family. Brandy Hall, near Bucklebury, is the residence of the Brandybucks. Peregrin Took founded the Great Smials library. Many of the books there were written by scribes from the distant kingdom of Gondor, the most famous being Findegil’s copy of The Thain’s Book, the best facsimile of The Red Book. It lacks the original volume’s section of genealogies—these were not reproduced in The Thain’s Book—but it includes all the improvements and additions to The Thain’s Book, as well as a copy of the whole of Bilbo Baggins’s Translations from the Elvish. Most of the other books at Great Smials are facsimiles and synopses of histories and legends relating to the ancient island of Númenor, the god-like warrior Elendil and his heirs, and the rise of Satan-like Sauron.
Fondly known to Hobbits as ‘Yellowskin’, The Yearbook of Tuckborough is bound in blazing yellow leather. One of the few ancient documents preserved in the Shire, ‘Yellowskin’ pre-dates The Red Book by 900 years. It records the births, marriages and deaths of the Took families, along with various other notable Shire events, and details of land sales in and around Tookland.
The library at Brandy Hall specialises in books concerned with the history of Eriador (a region that includes the Shire) and Rohan (a region far to the southeast). Many of the books were written or at least begun by Meriadoc Brandybuck, a member of the Fellowship of the Ring. Herblore of the Shire, for example, is Merry’s history of pipeweed and treatise on smoking methods and connoisseurship. He also wrote a Reckoning of Years, which relates the calendars of the Shire and Bree to those of Gondor, Rohan and the Elvish city of Rivendell; and Old Words and Names in the Shire, a volume whose title is self-explanatory. All these books are kept in Brandy Hall’s library.
Apart from preserving key books like Yellowskin and The Thain’s Book, the family seats of all the major Hobbit clans collect the types of shelf-filling volumes that can be found in every second-hand bookshop in Britain: genealogy, local history, poetry, cooking, gardening, sport and true crime. Shire readers especially delight in tales of burglars, heroes and ‘things never seen or done’. More popular still are books filled with things that Hobbits already know, ‘set out fair and square with no contradictions’.
The writing of Umberto Eco’s first novel took the better part of a decade. In preparing the book, Eco spent whole years writing nothing at all, while he painstakingly scouted imaginary locations. Compared to The Lord of the Rings, though, The Name of the Rose enjoyed a smooth and speedy pathway into print. Professor Tolkien’s epic, eschatological masterwork took so long and went through such trials that it very nearly was not published at all.
The tale of the book began in 1937, when Tolkien’s children’s story The Hobbit was published. He wrote The Hobbit as a diversion from his academic work, and from his passion project, a new ‘mythology for England’. He worked on the mythology all his life; eventually it would develop into The Silmarillion.
The Hobbit was an instant bestseller, and hard on its release the book’s publisher, Stanley Unwin, pressed Tolkien for a follow-up. Tolkien answered that he had ‘squandered’ so much material on The Hobbit, which he had not meant to have a sequel, ‘that it is difficult to find anything new in that world’. Nevertheless, he began The Lord of the Rings late in 1937. Unwin looked forward to publishing the ‘Hobbit sequel’ within three years. He would have to wait somewhat longer.
Tolkien delivered nothing until 1947, a full ten years later, when he showed a typescript to Unwin’s son, Rayner. By this time, Tolkien was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford. (Bag End’s cosy, bookish spaces recall Tolkien’s favourite Oxford haunts, such as Arts End at the Bodleian and the rabbit room at the Eagle & Child pub.) The manuscript he submitted was a peculiar work, much longer than the Unwins had anticipated, and aimed at adults rather than children. The first people to read the manuscript were unsure what to make of it. But Rayner urged his father to publish, calling the book brilliant and gripping. In the meantime, Tolkien continued to redraft and redraft, arriving in late 1949 at a version with which he was satisfied.
Around this time, Tolkien flirted with Collins publishers in the belief they would publish both The Lord of the Rings and an early version of The Silmarillion. In 1937 Unwin had rejected The Silmarillion as a sequel to The Hobbit, but Tolkien was determined to bundle his mythology with his newest work. He was also dissatisfied with Unwin’s efforts to sell his mediaeval fable Farmer Giles of Ham. Hence his dalliance with Collins, who had eyes for The Hobbit as well as its siblings.
In April 1950 Tolkien gave Unwin an ultimatum: publish The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings together or he would take both works elsewhere. Unwin refused, and Tolkien cooled his heels for two years while Collins equivocated. Then, in June 1952, the professor wrote to tell Rayner that he had changed his views. ‘Better something than nothing!’ he concluded. Could anything be done to unlock the gates that he had slammed?
Fearing a loss of as much as £1000 on The Lord of the Rings, Stanley Unwin offered Tolkien a contract under which the author would receive no advance and no royalties until the publisher covered his costs. Tolkien had divided the book into six titled parts, but had always intended it to be issued as a single volume. To reduce Unwin’s financial exposure, the book was instead split into three volumes. This kept the retail price low, and allowed the water to be tested by volume one, entitled The Fellowship of the Ring. From his firm’s printers, Unwin ordered 3500 copies of Fellowship, and it was published in July 1954. Tolkien’s painstaking colour illustrations were omitted, much to his lingering annoyance. Naomi Mitchison, Richard Hughes and C. S. Lewis all provided quotes for the dust jacket.
Before publication, proofs were sent to English booksellers. Unwin, looking back in 1960, remembered how J. G. Wilson of Bumpus recognised the book immediately as a great work. Some booksellers were almost wildly enthusiastic while others were left completely cold. The critical reaction was similarly mixed. In the more negative reviews, Tolkien’s imagination was labelled simplistic and shallow. The New Yorker reviewer f
ound Tolkien blind to the danger of becoming tedious, ‘and so he is tedious a good deal of the time’. From the beginning, though, ordinary readers’ reactions were much more uniform.
The inclusion of supplementary antiquarian material—Elvish and Dwarvish grammars and Hobbit family trees—delayed publication of The Return of the King until October 1955. Unwin was inundated with begging letters from readers trapped in agonising suspense. The appendices may not have been the sole cause of the delay. Unwin was not above showmanship, nor was he blind to the benefits of fermenting a little longer the appetite of readers. He moaned about the burden on his staff of answering all the letters, but he was crying crocodile tears; when finally the book was released, it broke all records. Sales of The Lord of the Rings would soon vastly exceed the total number of books written in the Middle Ages plus the number produced in the first decades of printing.
From 1954 to 1956, Dan Wickenden heaped praise on The Lord of the Rings in the New York Herald Tribune, but it would be a decade before the book really took off in North America. In 1965, the year of an American Tolkienian explosion, Ace Books published a pirated edition as a single volume which sold for seventy-five cents. This was made possible by Houghton Mifflin’s failure to secure US copyright. The Ace version spurred Tolkien’s publishers to produce their own paperback, in collaboration with Ballantine. These two cheap editions fed a Tolkien craze in America. Every college student had a copy of the paperback on his or her bookshelf, and dreamed of being or bedding Arwen Evenstar or Aragorn son of Arathorn. (In the same year, Ballantine also released a softback edition of The Hobbit. It was received with bemusement. The cover featured two emus, a lion and an unidentifiable tree with bulbous fruit. The tree, according to Ballantine, was ‘meant to suggest a Christmas tree’. The designer, it seems, had not read the book.)
