A truly lovely bit of news. A new Tolkien book, of sorts, is coming out in November, and not one that will be scraping the bottom of the barrel. Specifically, we’re getting an expanded version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s published letters, with some 150 reinserted:
https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/harpercollins-to-publish-revised-and-expanded-edition-of-tolkiens-letters-as-originally-intended
The current edition of 1981 has some 354 letters, from 1914 to August 1973. This will take us up to a good 500 published letters. Which is excellent news, however you slice it – these documents (while generally edited) provided a fascinating snapshot of Tolkien the man, his (often idiosyncratic) writing process, his relationship with publishers, his academic, religious, and family life, and so on. I finished a re-read of the existing edition in February, and I found I got more out of it now that I’m a bit older – I can get a better feel for historical and personal context. Can I also just say that Stanley Unwin had the patience of a saint?
I’ve often joked that I would sell Gollum’s grandmother for an expanded Letters… and, well, here we are. But the funny thing – these additions merely represent those cut from the 1981 edition, due to publishing constraints. There are still other copious Tolkienian Letters that have only come to light in the past 40 years, and those ones will still be omitted from this upcoming volume. And the current edition as it stands suffers from a July 1925-January 1937 ‘black hole’ (between letter #8 and #9). So there is plenty of potential for yet further expansions, further down the line, as ever-more gets unearthed. Of course, at that point, the publisher would probably have to split the collection into multiple volumes.
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