JRR Tolkien’s new letters reveal how irritable he could be

‘She reduced my manuscript to nonsense’ reads one letter as new archive sheds light on writer’s creative process

A new collection of letters will shed light on the personality of one of the world’s literary giants, JRR Tolkien.

The Lord of the Ringsand The Hobbitauthor is credited as being one of the bestselling writers of all time, with over 150 million copies being sold of his fantasy adventure series.

Tolkien did not believe himself to be an inventor, but a conduit for his work, and his life behind-the-scenes has been kept relatively private.

However, new documents released as part of a largely unpublished correspondence, reveal that the writer and philologist was meticulous with his craft and especially frustrated by sloppiness.

Writing about a typist’s careless work on a manuscript, he hit out: “She reduced [my manuscript] to nonsense. I have some sympathy with the typist faced with such unfamiliar matter; though evidently she wasn’t paying much attention.”

He also mocked her confusion of “poche for poetic, highballs(!) for high halls, and arias for cries”, according to The Guardian.

The letter is part of an archive that includes The Road Goes Ever On, the last major Tolkien manuscript in private hands, and a collaboration with the composer Donald Swann of the musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann.

A first edition copy of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’ (PA)

The piece is a song cycle that draws on verses from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, set to music by Swann. The collection includes 21 letters, as well as songs and poems, along with 13 pages of notes.

“It is unquestionably the most important archive of Tolkien material to be offered for sale in more than a generation,” said founder Christiaan Jonkers. The bookseller acquired the last archive from the Swann family, who died in 1994, with its £550,000 price reflecting its rarity.

The documents shed light on Tolkien’s creative process as well as his collaboration technique, contrary to his reputation as a solitary artist wary of newcomers. Tolkien and Swann had a relationship of mutual respect and admiration after first being introduced in 1965. They remained friends until the writer’s death in 1973.

Jonkers said of the correspondence: “When they [the songs] appeared in Lord of the Rings, they were simply in Elvish. The idea was that the reader enjoyed language that they couldn’t in any way understand, just as a sort of phonetic exercise in itself.

“Swann had chosen two poems in Elvish and it quickly became apparent that these would need Tolkien’s assistance with pronunciation and metre, both to aid the composer and any performer. In their correspondence, Tolkien offered instruction for performance and also context for the language.”

Tolkien’s light-hearted side also pops out of the work as he says of seeing a Flanders and Swann performance: “I have not laughed so much … since I last saw an archbishop of Canterbury slip on a banana-skin.”

The collection will be offered at the New York International Antiquarian book fair in April.