It reminds me of my own e-mail communication. In one day I tend to sent out between 100 and 170 emails. Some are short messages, some longer, some only concerning business, some even prepared emails that are saved templates... but I can also sent out personal emails to friends, wife or children. I would probably have two difficulties with having these emails be printed in book. First of all when I write to business, I might be talking about things that are only of importance to that business and not at all meant to be read by outsiders - these emails should stay private between that company and myself. The second type would be my personal mails to for example my wife and children. Everyone knows how much I love them, but they know me best of all in the world and how I speak to them is completely different, since there are no barriers, deep love and complete trust.

Then I look at the letters of J. R. R. Tolkien and somehow understand how difficult it must have been to get this book together and why it is so hard to get another volume published. We fans of course dream, and sometimes scream, for more letters - all of us wishing to enter Tolkien's world, to get to know him better, to learn some more about him. In the end it is in his letters where Tolkien is at word and tells sometimes things about his life, opinion, feelings,... and so do all of us, every day... on facebook, emails or even blogposts. But in the end it are only the real close people who will really know you, and 99% of the emails and blogposts you make do not represent how you really are. The year is still young and maybe we will one day see a new volume of Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien published, but will it be this year?

Celebrating 30 years The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien

It happens very often I get asked to look at some Tolkien letters that people have in their possesion, sometimes inherited, sometimes found in publishers or authors archives, sometimes bought in an auction or online. Some just wish to know if they should be insured or are of any real value. Some, who have in the mean time understood that anything that is signed by Tolkien, must be valuable and seek to sell them in search of much needed money. Others have been putting money aside for years to buy a signed Tolkien item and letters in general are easier to find then nicely signed books. So I get asked for advise on what to look for and then I try to tell them in short my opinion and set out some do & don'ts when buying Tolkien letters.

For me personally, it is indeed extremely lovely to own letters written by J. R. R. Tolkien, and those that are inside my collection are treasured and safely kept in a dark place, housed in archival protection wraps. i'm proud to own and study them for a while, since in the end I know they will survive me several times - if treasured with the same respect as I do.

What I probably treasure most is the big collection of transcripts of letters that I compiled over the years. It is amazing, when you order all letters by date, to see how Tolkien's signature evolved over time. It is a good reference file to discover fake signatures. There where moments I thought to write to the Tolkien Estate to see if a publication of such a collection was possible, but somehow I know it is not my call. My big passion is Tolkien's autograph and I try not publish to many images online of those, since there are always (sadly enough) people who want to try and forge signatures. Lately a lot of fake letters have been pushed on the market through ebay and the flood of these forgeries has even slowed down the sale of genuine letters. There have been fewer and fewer Tolkien letters up for sale on auctions and mostly the letters by J. R. R. Tolkien that get sold are also not so interesting as the onces we saw being sold before the release of Peter Jackson's movie adaptation of The Lord of the Rings - long handwritten, personal letters seem to have been hoarded up by now and don't seem to switch hands any more.

There have been several rules I have put on myself when it comes to Tolkien collecting, one of the biggest is to stay away of type signed letters (TLS). For one or another reason I have never been attracted to collect typed letters by Tolkien. Some are very interesting, but lately almost 9 in 10 were fakes and so my feeling about not collecting them proved to be right. Letters are strange items when it comes to value... it is very different from signed Tolkien books, where there are some simple rules to follow to determine the value. With letters it is not so easy, since most of the value is determined by very subjective things, like how interesting is the content of the letter, is there any mention of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit or The Silmarillion, who was it written to, when was it sent out - for example we have seen up for auction the last known letter written by Tolkien and mainly because of that it was sold for far more then anyone would have guessed. As said at the moment the sale of letters has slowed down, but will go up again a lot with the Hobbit movies coming. We have seen it happen before and can now already feel a slight change in the market.

So let us celebrate this year and read once more from Letters of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien! I'm certain if you have not read this book before you will learn a lot about Tolkien and will enjoy this book very much. So pick up a copy! As for collectors I'll post here a couple of examples of pre-prepared letters - very much like my own pre-prepared email templates - where Tolkien added the date, name, signature and when he had time or was touched by something in the letter he was answering to, added some personal note. Even while I have just said that collectors should better not buy TLS, they remain a piece of history and are lovely. Especially when they contain a nice autograph and a personal note.

Enjoyed this post? Click to get future articles delivered by email or get the RSS feed.

Spread the news about this J.R.R. Tolkien article: