Tolkien’s friend Selby
21 December 2021 | Mallorn, Winter, 2021, 34
One of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most interesting early letters is not included in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), but is definitely a significant one. It dates from 14 December 1937 and was written to a friend named Selby. Tolkien wrote, in part: “I don’t much approve of The Hobbit myself, preferring my own mythology (which is just touched on) with its consistent nomenclature — Elrond, Gondolin, and Esgaroth have escaped out of it — and organized history, to this rabble of Eddaic-named dwarves out of Voluspa, newfangled hobbits and gollums (invented in an idle hour) and Anglo-Saxon runes.…”
❧