Middle-earth Journeys

Iolanthe wrote: I think Baynes's illustrations would have jarred him after that point and the fact that he saw her as the potential illustrator makes me wonder at what stage he realised that this was an adult book.

That's a really important point to consider!

Here is (via TORN) an obituary for Pauline Baynes :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/au ... dteenagers

It's an interesting piece and I'm glad the UK media are giving her a mention.

Thanks for the link - that's a facinating piece! I never realised that she had also written children's books or that she was still illustrating. I really must do that essay on her.

I still regret not buying the rare encyclopedia of mythology that she'd illustrated that I saw at Oxonmoot. It was wonderful and the only thing that stopped me was thinking about lugging all that weight back along with my suitcase, all the other books I bought and the paintings!

I should have just got a taxi to the car park .

I've never seen her cover drawing for Hobbit. I wonder if it appeared in the US.

I also hadn't realised that she'd done a Hobbit cover. I've done a bit of digging and it was the 1961 Puffin edition (the first UK paperback). Our good friend Beren, of course, has a copy of it on his Tolkien Library website

Now I see it I recognise it though when and where I originally saw it I've no idea!

There is another article about Baynes here:

Telegraph

It's sad to read that:

The work for Tolkien led to a commission to illustrate CS Lewis's Narnia books, though Lewis, an Oxford friend of Tolkien's, was not so generous about his illustrator. To her face he praised her work, but Pauline Baynes was later hurt to discover that he had been critical of her pictures to others, telling his biographer, George Sayer, for instance, that she could not draw lions.

The Telegraph article is fascinating isn't it!! I'm afraid I think CS Lewis's comment about the lions is totally misguided - her Narnia illustrations are some of the most enduring images from my childhood reading. I didn't realise that Tolkien had essentially discovered her. it's interesting that the drawings which caught his eye had a religious theme - fate was definitely taking a hand there!!

Thanks for the link, Iolanthe--I didn't think to check Beren's site. The style is somewhat different from her line drawings.

It is - I really like her colour work, especially the covers of the Narnia books. As a child I loved the cover of A horse and his Boy and I think the cover of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is wonderful with it's wavy ocean and exotic fish.

Hello all -

Have not posted since May or so. It seems a very long time and yet the summer seems to have passed very quickly.

Not much news on calendar collecting. Picked up a few over the summer. But as most serious collectors find (I suspect), the more one has, the harder it is to find items that one doesn't have.

Attended MythCon 39 at CCSU on 15 - 16 August. Ted Nasmith attended and very graciously signed all of Tolkien calendars (that I brought from my collection) that he had illustrated for me , and signed a copy of the new 2009 issue (that he was selling at his dealers' table). Also, four of the illustrators of the 1990 NOT Tolkien Calendar attended (not surprisingly, perhaps, as it was a MythSoc creation), and they signed my copy of it. And the meeting itself was very interesting and a great deal of fun.

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

Sounds like you had a fantastic time, Parmastahir! I can sympathise with your collecting problems - you are now looking for rarer and rarer items. But how great to have so many from your collection signed .

What a treat to meet Nasmith Parmastahir. Did you get to talk to him?

Hello Philipa -

Indeed I did get to speak with him. The first day that I arrived, I was able to introduce myself at the evening meal and sit with him at the same table. I had "spoken" with him (via emails) a lot in Nov/Dec last year as we were creating the 2008 Heren Istarion calendar which he very generously supported by allowing us to reproduce some of his works. During the conference, I set up a booth and displayed about 40 rare calendars from my collection. Ted visited and we discussed many of them including the 1998 Khandlendar by Alex Lewis which he had heard of but not seen (as only 12 were created by the master). Ted knows Alex and put me in contact with him (and Mr. Lewis wrote back some wonderful comments about the calendar and his current projects). Ted is rather quiet and unassuming but wonderfully talented . . . and in more ways than one. On Saturday night, he played his guitar and sang about a half dozen songs from LotR that he had set to own music. It was a great time and most fortunate that MythCon 39 was held less than a three hour drive from my house.

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

Parmastahir wrote:On Saturday night, he played his guitar and sang about a half dozen songs from LotR that he had set to own music.

Holy mackerel that is something. So he is very talented in other ways. It seems he lives, sleeps and dreams Tolkien.

Your rare calendars must be something to behold. You are generous to display them to the public.

It was a great time and most fortunate that MythCon 39 was held less than a three hour drive from my house.

That was most fortunate. Does this event take place each year in the same location?

How wonderful, Parmastahir. I had a look at the calendar you mentioned but you only have the cover up .... sounds intriguing!

I don't know that it's generous of me to display the rarities. It's somewhat selfish on my part as it is simply so much fun! I have done so twice now (the other time being an annual Tolkien Conference at the University of Vermont) and both times, there were a lot of visitors and questions and appreciation of them. And it would be truly selfish of me if I kept them locked up in a closet and did not allow same when such opportunities presented themselves.

I would like to make the Khandlendar a calendar of the month feature. But it is such a large size (metric A3, I think) and much of the unique humor is entries in the calendar squares which would be lost in the lo-res files that I can currently post on my website. (Someday I will solve that problem and post it.) The artwork is typified by these examples: one illustration is simply a square of bright red paper and the title is "The Cracks of Doom." Another is solid black square titled "Moria." Another is a picture of some woods with two eyes (the kind that are small, plastic hemispheres about 1-2 mm in size with a little black bb inside that rolls around) glued onto it titled "Treebeard hiding in the forest." It's a hoot.

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

Too funny - I love the wacky Treebeard one!