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663

J. R. R. Tolkien

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:3,000.00 - 4,000.00 USD
J. R. R. Tolkien

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Auction Date:2012 Apr 18 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
British author and scholar (1892–1973) whose Lord of the Rings trilogy became one of the towering classics of fantasy literature and inspired a series of wildly popular films. TLS, two pages, 8 x 10, blind embossed 20 Northmoor Road letterhead, August 2, 1946. Letter to Mr. Mroczkowski, his Polish translator, regarding Mroczkowski gaining a scholarship to Oxford. In part: “I am glad to hear from you again. I have heard from Mr. C. S. Lewis that he was going to see you, but I have not heard any more. I have been immersed in a most tiresome and difficult affair, not by any means yet concluded, which has engaged my whole attention; so I must, I fear, confess that I have done nothing further for you beyond speaking to Lewis on your behalf. Also I was not clear that it was my part to do anything, except to support any move made by the British Council to get you accepted by some ‘society’ here — society covers colleges, the association of non-collegiate students, called St. Catharine's and the approved ‘halls of residence’ (such as the Jesuit Campion Hall)…

This month is a bad one. Most people are away. As soon as I got your letter this morning I rang up the office of St. Catharine's hoping to discover whether the British Council had approached them on your behalf, and whether in any case the Censor (the official title of the head of that society) had still any vacancies. I could get no reply. Neither can I, at the moment, get on to the British Council's local office — I will do so before I close this letter. In the meanwhile, I do not at feel at all certain that Notre Dame might not prove a better place than present-day Oxford. It is not easy to advise you; but I should feel inclined to close with any offer from that direction, unless the British Council have something definite to offer here.”

Tolkien uses the second page to add a lengthy postscript, which reads, in part: “I have now got into touch with both the Censor of St. Catharine's and the British Council. Their answers make me feel sure that I should advise you to take any offer elsewhere…I think it would at this date be impossible for the British Council to place you for the coming year. The Censor told me that he had no vacancy, and would take no more men; and he is far more easy to deal with than the colleges.” Postscript is signed “J.R.R.T.” In fine condition, with intersecting mailing folds, one through a single letter of the letter’s signature, and a few light wrinkles.

At the time he wrote this letter, Tolkien was an English professor at Oxford, where he taught from 1925 to 1959. His close friend C. S. Lewis also served on the Oxford faculty. The pair became friendly as members of Kolbítar, an Old Norse reading group, and the Inklings, an informal discussion society that encouraged the writing of fantasy. Tolkien’s friend Mroczkowski would not attend Oxford in 1946, but rather spent a year as a Research Fellow at University of Notre Dame in the United States, where he worked towards his doctorate in English Literature. Mroczkowski later spent a year in Oxford in the late 1950s, where he met Tolkien, Lewis, and other members of the Inklings. "I presented myself to Tolkien in the following way,” reminisced Mroczkowski. “I come from Mordor, I come from Mordor.” A fine letter from the celebrated fantasist.
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