Middle-earth Journeys

On Tolkien: Interviews, Reminiscences, and Other Essays

A collection of rare interviews and personal reminiscences found nowhere else. Beginning with a short interview with Tolkien from 1957 and continuing with remembrances and essays up through Peter Jackson’s films, the book gives a developing picture of Tolkien the man and writer, first in his own voice and later from recollections of his friends and family.

Among the unique pieces are two lengthy recorded interviews that reveal Tolkien’s conversation style. Also included are a discussion by Priscilla of her father’s painting and drawing, and Christopher’s description of the making of The Silmarillion.We hear, too, from Tolkien’s colleagues and contemporaries at Oxford and in publishing, who discuss how Tolkien felt about his work’s reception in the wider world. And we read previously unpublished reflections from the man who arguably knew Tolkien as well as anyone, Humphrey Carpenter, his biographer.

© Tor.n

Tolkien's version of Norse legend to be published for first time
Despondent Tolkien fans forced to wait until at least 2010 for the release of the film version of The Hobbit will be cheered by the news that the author's previously unpublished retelling of a Norse legend also adapted by Wagner to create the Ring cycle is to be published for the first time this May.

Tolkien put the tales of Sigurd the Völsung and the fall of the Niflungs into narrative verse while he was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford during the 1920s and 1930s - before he wrote his most famous works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which have sold 150m copies worldwide.

Little is currently known about his retelling of the legend, although it has been suggested that Sigurd's slaying of the dragon Fafnir was in Tolkien's mind when he wrote the encounter between Bilbo and Smaug in The Hobbit. He also re-uses the story of Sigurd's dragon-slaying in his story of Turin Turambar, the protagonist of The Children of Hurin, according to the JRR Tolkien Encyclopaedia, while elements of the story - a golden ring, and a broken sword which is remade - can also be seen in The Lord of the Rings.

In the legend which Tolkien relates, according to the Tolkien Encyclopaedia, after Sigurd, the legendary "prince of the heroes of the North", kills Fafnir, he takes his gold, and then rescues the woman Brynhild from a rock surrounded by flames. She pledges herself to him, but he marries another woman, Gudrún, returning to Brynhild's rock later disguised as Gudrún's brother Gunnar, to win her for Gunnar as his bride. Rivalry then develops between Gudrún and Brynhild, culminating in the murder of Sigurd.

HarperCollins, which is publishing the text as The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, will be hoping the fact the tale is in narrative verse won't put off Tolkien's legions of fans. Tolkien's unfinished Middle Earth tale The Children of Hurin, which HarperCollins brought out in 2007 after it was completed by his son Christopher, has sold more than 1m copies to date in English. Christopher Tolkien is also editing and introducing the new book.

Ian Collier of the Tolkien Society welcomed the news. "The Society looks forward to seeing this work in print which will help show that JRR Tolkien was a gifted academic as well as a very talented writer of fiction," he said.

Obscure JRR Tolkien book Published This Summer
Posted: 17 Feb 2009 05:02 PM CST

The Associated Press are reporting that a previously unpublished work by JRR Tolkien will be released this Summer.

“The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun,” a thorough reworking in verse of old Norse epics that predates Tolkien’s writing of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, will be published in May by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

According to Houghton, the book will include an introduction by Tolkien and notes by his son, Christopher Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien, whose fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy have sold millions of copies, died in 1973. “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun” was written in the 1920s and ’30s, when the author was teaching at Oxford University.

Simple tales that reveal Tolkien's inspiration

BLACK AND WHITE OGRE COUNTRY: THE LOST TALES OF HILARY TOLKIEN, edited by Angela Gardner, illustrated by Jef Murray (ADC Publications £9.99)

By Neil Norman

Thirty-six years after the death of JRR Tolkien, the industry that he unwittingly generated shows little sign of abating.

As the labyrinthine preparations occupy those engaged in the forthcoming movie of The Hobbit, a small but significant insight into Tolkien's early inspiration arrives in the shape of this book.

Hilary Tolkien was two years younger than his more famous brother. For much of their adult lives, they continued to correspond even though separated by professional and personal circumstances.

While Ronald found fame and fortune with his works of myth and fantasy, Hilary was content to tend his market garden until his death in 1976. Black And White Ogre Country is a pre-emptive strike for a much larger book planned for release later in the year.

It is a collection of letters, stories and fragments discovered recently in a notebook written by Hilary in his twilight years as a remembrance of times past.

When all the scholarly analyses of his older brother's work have subsided into academic oblivion, these simple tales and observations may stand as a truly enlightening glimpse into the nature of Ronald Tolkien's inspiration.

Hilary was no great writer, yet his observational powers were undiminished by age. His life was simpler and he never lost his appetite for the natural world, preferring gardens and woodland, trees, fruit, flowers and animals to more bookish, interior pursuits.

The memories of boyhood are simple, uncluttered and piercingly evocative: 'The steam rollers were always preceded by a walking man with a red flag, and not far away, seated on a heap of stones, was a man with heavy glasses on, breaking up stones with a hammer to do the road repairs.

'At the same time, the first motors we had ever seen came along, but not very far did they ever go without a puncture or bits of engine falling out.'

It is evident that the brothers were extraordinarily close; their shared experiences as children, encouraged by the wilder, more physically adventurous Hilary, gave Ronald the grounding in nature that anchored his fantasy to the earth. Reading these almost whimsical fragments is like scanning a rudimentary blueprint for The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit.

Hilary's sense of impending doom with the advent of World War I is also acute, though expressed with wry humour.

Having enlisted in the 16th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a bugler, he served in France and Belgium. 'Fixed bayonets once,' he writes. 'But never had to use them.'

As a collection of tales for children, it has immense charm. But for Tolkien fans, it offers a hitherto undisclosed insight into the origins of his monumental works of fantasy.

© © 2009 Associated Newspapers Ltd