Читать книгу The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien - Christopher Tolkien - Страница 53

[Unwin wrote on 4 December to say that Foyle’s bookshop in London were to issue The Hobbit under the imprint of their Children’s Book Club, and that this had enabled Allen & Unwin to reprint the book. This was all the more desirable as the previous stock of copies had been burnt during an air-raid on London.]

7 December 1942

20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Mr Unwin,

Thank you for your note, containing two items of hope. I have for some time intended to write and enquire whether in the present situation it was of any use, other than private and family amusement, to endeavour to complete the sequel to The Hobbit. I have worked on it at intervals since 1938, all such intervals in fact as trebled official work, quadrupled domestic work, and ‘Civil Defence’¹ have left. It is now approaching completion. I hope to get a little free time this vacation, and might hope to finish it off early next year. My heart rather misgives me, all the same. I ought to warn you that it is very long, in places more alarming than ‘The Hobbit’, and in fact not really a ‘juvenile’ at all. It has reached Chapter XXXI² and will require at least six more to finish (these are already sketched); and the chapters are as a rule longer than the chapters of The Hobbit. Is such an ‘epic’ possible to consider in the present circumstances? Would you like to wait, until it is really finished; or would you care to see a considerable portion of it now? It is in type-script (of various amateur hands) up to about Ch. xxiii. I don’t think you will be disappointed with the quality of it. It has had the approval of the original Hobbit audience (my sons and Mr C. S. Lewis), who have read or heard it many times. But it is a question of paper, bulk, and market! It would require two maps.

The burning of The Hobbit was a blow. I am to blame in not writing (as I intended) and expressing to you my sympathy with the grievous damage you must have sustained, of which I shared only a very small part. Is any ‘compensation’ eventually recoverable?. . . .

Would you also consider a volume, containing three or four shorter ‘Fairy’ stories and some verses? ‘Farmer Giles’, which I once submitted to you, has pleased a large number of children and grown-ups. If too short, I could add to it one or two similar tales, and include some verse on similar topics, including ‘Tom Bombadil’. . . .

Yours sincerely,

J. R. R. Tolkien.