Appendix V
Author’s Copies List
Like most authors, Tolkien received a number of author’s copies of his book when it was published, which he distributed to friends and family. By luck, a listing that represents his working out of who to give copies to survives, written in the flyleaf of the page proofs of the book (Marq. 1/2/3). While we cannot be certain that this list represents his final decisions, having been written at the time the text was finalized (February–March 1937) rather than at the time of the book’s release (21st September), we can confirm it on some points, since copies inscribed by Tolkien to some of these recipients have shown up at auctions in recent years. The Bodleian also holds a file of letters Tolkien received regarding The Hobbit (MS. Tolkien 21) which includes letters of thanks from many of those listed below, gratefully acknowledging the book’s arrival.
Below I give the list (or more properly lists) as they appear on the flyleaf, complete with cancellations, and Tolkien’s notes to himself (e.g., ‘have’, indicating that the person in question already has a copy and so need not be sent a presentation copy from Tolkien’s limited stock), followed by a section in which I briefly identify the recipients, insofar as this is possible after the lapse of seventy-five years. In addition to the file of letters in the Bodleian, the following draws heavily on such sources as Tolkien’s letters (including unpublished letters in the Allen & Unwin archive), the Tolkien Family Album by John & Priscilla Tolkien [1992] (hereafter Family Album), Scull & Hammond’s J.R.R. Tolkien Companion & Guide, a list of identifications drawn up by Taum Santoski after a discussion of the topic with Christopher Tolkien, and some details provided to me by Priscilla Tolkien, to whom my thanks; I am grateful to Doug Anderson for providing some dates and correcting me on several points.
The Hobbit
Revise
EVG: E. V. (Eric Valentine) Gordon, 1896–1938. A Canadian Rhodes Scholar, successively Tolkien’s student, colleague, and collaborator. Co-editor with Tolkien of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight [1925] and several unfinished projects, including editions of Pearl, ‘The Wanderer’, and ‘The Seafarer’. Contributor to Songs for the Philologists, and author, editor, or translator in his own right of An Introduction to Old Norse [1927], The Battle of Maldon [1937], and Scandinavian Archaeology [1937]. He succeeded Tolkien as Professor of English Language at Leeds and in 1930 became Smith Professor of English Language and Germanic Philology at Manchester in central England. Knighted by the King of Denmark for his contributions to Icelandic studies. His letter thanking Tolkien for this presentation copy, dated 23rd September 1937, is now in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 57). For more on Gordon, see Douglas A. Anderson’s ‘An Industrious Little Devil: E. V. Gordon as Friend and Collaborator with Tolkien’ in Tolkien the Medievalist, ed. Jane Chance [2003], pages 15–25; his photograph can be seen in the Family Album, page 47.
C.S.L.: C. S. (‘Jack’) Lewis, 1898–1963. Co-founder with Tolkien of the Inklings, a tutor at Magdalen College Oxford, and at the time perhaps Tolkien’s closest friend. At the time of The Hobbit’s publication he had just published his first scholarly book, The Allegory of Love [1936], and would shortly publish his first work of fiction, Out of the Silent Planet [1938], which had originated in a bargain with Tolkien for them to each write a space-travel or time travel story (for more on this bargain, see my essay ‘The Lost Road, The Dark Tower, and The Notion Club Papers’ in Tolkien’s Legendarium, ed. Flieger & Hostetter [1996], pages 199–218). The first outside Tolkien’s immediate family to read The Hobbit, and contributor of one of the cover blurbs, he ultimately didn’t get a presentation copy because A&U sent him a review copy instead (hence his name’s cancellation in the list above); cf. Charles Furth’s letter to JRRT on 1st June 1937 promising to send Lewis an advance copy (A&U archive). His enthusiastic review (‘Prediction is dangerous, but The Hobbit may well prove a classic’) appeared in The Times Literary Supplement on 2nd October 1937 (reprinted in On Stories [1982], 81–2), followed by another in the Times itself on 8th October. The classic study of the ups and eventual downs of his friendship with Tolkien can be found in Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings [1978].
Griffiths: Elaine Griffiths, 1909–1996. Student of JRRT’s, to whom had been entrusted the task of updating John R. Clark Hall’s translation of Beowulf for Allen & Unwin, with Tolkien to provide a new critical foreword on Old English prosody. Ultimately Griffiths failed to complete the project, which passed instead to Tolkien’s colleague C. L. Wrenn (see below). Griffiths however remained a longtime family friend; see Family Album page 69 for a brief but warm account, plus a photo. For more on Griffiths and The Hobbit, see pages xxxvi, xxxviii, 693–4, & 702 of this book; for an amusing audio account in her own voice of her role in bringing The Hobbit to the attention of a publisher, see J. R. R. Tolkien: An Audio Portrait.
Kilbride: K. M. (Katharine Mary) Kilbride, 1900–1966, a student of Tolkien’s at Leeds to whom he sent both The Hobbit and his essay ‘Beowulf: The Monsters & the Critics’ together. Her letter of thanks, reminiscing about the ‘real artistic talent’ in the English House at Leeds in the old days (‘what fun you must have had drawing out the maps’), is in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 66). Her inscribed copy, which included a passage in verse from The Lost Road (cf. HME V.44), was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in December 2002.
Marjorie: Marjorie Incledon, 1891–1973. JRRT’s cousin, the elder daughter of his mother Mabel’s older sister, May Suffield Incledon. The creator, with her sister Mary, of ‘Animalic’, the first invented language to which Tolkien was exposed.
Mary: Mary Incledon, 1895–1940. JRRT’s cousin, the younger daughter of his mother Mabel’s older sister, May Suffield Incledon. Co-creator, with her sister Marjorie, of ‘Animalic’ and collaborator with Tolkien in the creation of his first invented language, Nevbosh. Godmother of JRRT’s oldest son, Fr. John Tolkien.
Chambers: R. W. (Raymond Wilson) Chambers, 1874–1942. Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College London, who in 1925 had refused the Rawlinson & Bosworth chair of Anglo Saxon at Oxford, thus opening the way for JRRT’s election to that post. A colleague of A. E. Housman and W. P. Ker, he was considered by Tolkien ‘the greatest of living Anglo-Saxon scholars’ (Beowulf & the Critics, ed. Michael Drout [2002], page 32). Among his major publications are Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic Legend [1912], Beowulf: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem [1921, rev. ed. 1932], ‘Beowulf and the Heroic Age’ [1925; called by Tolkien ‘the most significant single essay on the poem that I know’], and a biography of Sir Thomas More [1935] which is said to have aided the cause of More’s canonization. As documented by Douglas A. Anderson (‘R. W. Chambers and The Hobbit’, in Tolkien Studies Vol. III, pages 137–147), Tolkien and Chambers regularly exchanged publications; Chambers is one of the three people to whom Tolkien is known to have shown his alliterative Arthurian poem ‘The Fall of Arthur’ (the others being E. V. Gordon and C. S. Lewis), and Tolkien also presented Chambers with a fine calligraphic copy of his still-unpublished poem ‘Doworst’.
Tolkien’s letter to Chambers of 8th February 1937 promising to send him the book is now in the Special Collections of University College London (Chambers Papers 101); his letter to Allen & Unwin requesting Chambers be sent a copy (JRRT to Ch. Furth, 13th August 1937) with an enclosed note that seems not to have survived, and Allen & Unwin’s response (Furth to JRRT, 16th August 1937), are in the Allen & Unwin archives. Chambers’ two brief notes of thanks upon the book’s actual arrival, the first of which Tolkien forwarded to Allen & Unwin (see Letters, page 20), are in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folios 45 [undated] & 46 [postmarked 7 Sep 1937]).
Jennings: Aileen Jennings (born circa 1924) & Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001). The two daughters of Dr. H. C. (Henry Cecil) & Madge Jennings, family friends of the Tolkiens who attended the same church. Born in Boston (Lincolnshire, not Massachusetts), the Jennings sisters moved to Oxford with their parents in December 1932/January 1933 when their father became Medical Officer of Health and School Medicine for the County of Oxford, a post which he held for many years. Aileen Jennings, the older sister, may possibly be the ‘girl of 12–13’ to whom Tolkien referred as having read The Hobbit before its submission to Allen & Unwin (Letters, page 21).
While Aileen’s interests lay in medicine and science, Elizabeth, the younger sister, became a librarian and also a fairly well-known poet who published more than two dozen collections of her poetry. She was associated with ‘The Movement’, a loose group of poets contemporary with, and sharing some of the same members as, the ‘Angry Young Men’ of the early 1950s (e.g., Kingsley Amis and Inkling John Wain); they are remembered today primarily for including among their number the poet Philip Larkin. After her death, she was commemorated in her hometown by having a street named after her in north Oxford, ‘Elizabeth Jennings Way’ in Summertown (not far from Wolvercote Cemetery, where Tolkien is buried).
Aunt Mabel: Mabel Tolkien Mitton, circa 1858–1937, sister of Tolkien’s father Arthur. According to Scull & Hammond, the Mittons remained in the Moseley area outside Birmingham (Companion & Guide Vol II, page 1009). It is not clear whether Mabel Mitton died before being sent her copy of the book; her sister Florence (see below) complains in her letter to JRRT early the next year that Mabel’s death delayed her learning of the book’s existence (‘I . . . felt if Aunt Mabel had been alive she would have sent it to me’—MS. Tolkien 21, folio 120).
Aunt Florence: Florence Tolkien Hadley, circa 1863–?? [death date unknown], sister of Tolkien’s father Arthur. Having immigrated to Canada, she did not learn of the book’s existence until early the next year; her letter from Victoria, British Columbia, dated 13th February 1938 and thanking Tolkien and Edith on behalf of herself and her daughter Midge, is now in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 120).
Note that although she is not included in either list, Tolkien also seems to have sent a copy to his third surviving Tolkien aunt, Grace Tolkien Mountain (born circa 1861, death date unknown); her postcard from Newcastle-on-Tyne is also in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 88); furthermore, in her letter (folio 120) Florence Hadley mentions ‘writ[ing to] Aunt Grace for particulars’ about the book after she had heard about its existence from a friend.
Wrenn: C. L. (Charles Leslie) Wrenn, 1895–1969. Fellow Inkling and colleague of Tolkien’s in teaching medieval language and literature at Oxford. Previously a lecturer at Leeds (1928–1930), though after Tolkien’s time there, at the time of The Hobbit’s writing and publication he was University Lecturer in English Language at Oxford (1930–1939). Ultimately, after several years at the University of London, he returned to Oxford, where he succeeded to Tolkien’s chair as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in 1946. The Wrenns (Charles, Agnes, and their daughter Carola) and Tolkien family were close enough to vacation together at Lamorna Cove near Land’s End in Cornwall in the summer of 1932, an occasion from which the character ‘Gaffer Gamgee’ entered the family’s private mythology, having a cameo in Mr. Bliss not long after; a photograph from this vacation appears in the Family Album, page 62. When Elaine Griffiths proved unable to complete the revision of the Clark Hall Beowulf [circa 1938], Tolkien recommended Wrenn for the project, which he completed in short order; it was published in 1940 with Tolkien’s ‘Prefatory Remarks’, which Wrenn praised as ‘the most permanently valuable part of the book’ (1950 edition, page vi). In the early to mid-1950s Wrenn is said to have described Tolkien as ‘the one man of genius then teaching in the English School’ (Scull & Hammond, Companion & Guide Vol. II, page 1124), and despite Tolkien’s giving Wrenn as an example in 1956 of those fellow academics who disapproved of his writing The Lord of the Rings instead of devoting all his time to scholarly work (Letters of JRRT, page 238) Wrenn was ultimately co-editor of Tolkien’s festschrift, English and Medieval Studies: Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday [1962]. The Clark Hall collaboration with Tolkien seems to have been his first book; other major works include an edition of Beowulf [1953], An Old English Grammar (with Randolph Quirk) [1957], and A Study of Old English Literature [1967]. For more on Wrenn, see David Bratman’s Appendix (‘The Inklings: Their Lives and Works’) to Diana Pavlac Glyer’s The Company They Keep [2007], pages 247–8, and the entry in Scull & Hammond’s Companion & Guide (Vol. II, pages 1123–25).
D’Ardenne: Simone d’Ardenne, 1899–1986; student, family friend, and collaborator of Tolkien’s, first on an edition of The Life and Passion of St. Juliene [1936], which at Tolkien’s insistence appeared only under her name (in order to boost her career), and on an unfinished edition of Seinte Katerine, which they proposed to the Early English Text Society in 1936 and later expanded to include Sawles Warde as well but ultimately abandoned because of the war and Tolkien’s absorption in his fiction (e.g., The Lord of the Rings). They did publish several minor articles arising out of the latter project (‘“Iþþlen” in Sawles Warde’ [1947], ‘MS. Bodley 34: A Re-Collation of a Collation’ [1947–8]). A native Belgian who became Professor of Comparative Grammar at Liège in 1938, d’Ardenne lived with the Tolkien family at Northmoor Road for a year starting in October 1932; she would thus have been a member of the household at the time Tolkien completed The Hobbit. In addition to translating Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham into French [tr. 1937, published 1975], d’Ardenne wrote a warm memoir of Tolkien, ‘The Man and the Scholar’, that appears in the memorial festschrift J. R. R. Tolkien: Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, ed. Mary Salu & Robert T. Farrell [1979], pages 33–7. A photo appears in the Family Album (page 68); for more on d’Ardenne, see the account in Scull & Hammond’s Companion & Guide, Vol. II, pages 202–204.
Helen B: Helen Buckhurst, 1894–1963, a resident student, English language tutor, and Icelandic scholar who had been a Fellow and Tutor at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (1926–1930). Tolkien had been appointed to supervise Buckhurst’s thesis, The Historical Grammar of Old Icelandic, in December 1927 (Scull & Hammond, Companion & Guide Vol. I, page 143), and like so many of his students she became a family friend; she was also a friend of the American medievalist Kemp Malone and his family. An adult convert to Catholicism, in June 1929 she became Priscilla Tolkien’s godmother. At the time of The Hobbit’s publication she was teaching at Loreto College in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, a Catholic girls’ school founded in 1922; her letter of thanks to ‘Dear Ronald’, dated 23rd September [1937], praises The Hobbit as ‘delightful . . . my only complaint is that there are not more illustrations. I only hope it is the first of many such books’ (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 117). See page 110 and The Annotated Hobbit for a discussion of her paper on ‘Icelandic Folklore’ and the belief that trolls turn to stone in daylight (DAA.80–82).
Aunt Jane: Jane Suffield Neave, 1872–1963, the younger sister of Tolkien’s mother Mabel, whose farm in Worcestershire provided the name ‘Bag-End’ for Bilbo’s home (Carpenter, Tolkien: A Biography, page 106). As a teacher who was both college-educated, receiving a Bachelor of Science in 1895, and at one point warden of a women’s college in St. Andrews Scotland (circa 1911), she not only helped tutor him as a child (Letters, page 377) but might have helped inspire his lifelong interest in women’s education; he wrote of her in 1961: ‘The professional aunt is a fairly recent development, perhaps; but I was fortunate in having an early example: one of the first women to take a science degree. She is now ninety, but only a few years ago went botanizing in Switzerland’ (Letters, page 308). Jane Neave was among the party of eight who had toured Switzerland with Tolkien in the summer of 1911, the trip which inspired some incidents and scenery in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. During the War years and afterwards she lived (sometimes with Tolkien’s brother Hilary) on farms in Nottinghamshire (circa 1914) and Worcestershire (circa 1923); in later life she lived near Evesham (outside Birmingham) and in Wales. In 1961 Tolkien prepared the poetry collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil [1962] in response to her request that he ‘get out a small book . . . that we old ’uns can afford to buy for Christmas presents’ (Carpenter, Tolkien: A Biography, page 244). At the time of The Hobbit’s publication she was still living on the farm in Worcestershire, but because of her having changed its name she did not receive her copy until early October, after Tolkien had obtained her current address from Hilary. Her letter of 1st October [1937] asking about the book and her letter-card of 9th October 1937 expressing her delight in it (‘It is marvellous. I had to stop reading it in the bus this morning because I laughed so much I feared I might be seized as an inebriate or needing other asylum. The origin of Golf finished me.’) and calling it ‘a great joy’ are now in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folios 125 & 126). For more on Jane Neave, see Scull & Hammond, Companion & Guide, Vol. II, pages 637–8, and Andrew H. Morton’s two little books, Tolkien’s Gedling–1914 [2008, with John Hayes] and Tolkien’s Bag End [2009].
Rattenbury: a colleague of Tolkien’s, probably R. M. (Robert Mantle) Rattenbury, 1901–1970, a noted classical scholar who was for many years Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge and later Senior Tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge. Longtime editor of the Classical Review, in addition to having contributed a chapter on ‘Romance: Traces of Lost Greek Novels’ to New Chapters in the History of Greek Literature, Third Series, ed. J. U. Powell [1933], he is best known for having published, with T. W. Lumb, what was for many years the standard edition of the Aethiopica of Heliodorus, a third- or fourth-century Greek romance [three volumes: 1935, 1938, & 1943]. Aside from his appearance on this list, his only known connections with Tolkien are having been an Assistant Lecturer in Classics at the University of Leeds from 1924 to 1927, thus overlapping with Tolkien’s final two years there, and also being a friend of E. V. Gordon.
Livesleys or Livesey: friends of the Tolkien family, probably the Mr. & Mrs. Livesey who, along with their son Edgar, then a teenager, ran a guest house called ‘Aurora’ in Sidmouth on the Devonshire coast, where the Tolkien family stayed during their summer holiday each year between 1934 and 1937 (it is not clear if they also stayed at the Liveseys’ during their 1938 visit). See the Family Album (pages 64–5) for a description of these family vacations. Some of the Allen & Unwin correspondence is actually sent from or to ‘Aurora’, such as Tolkien’s letter to Furth on 13th August 1937, in which he notes ‘I shall be at above address until Sat. Aug 21’, and Furth’s reply of 16th August 1937 (Allen & Unwin archives).
A H Smith: A. H. (Hugh) Smith, 1903–1967, a student of Tolkien’s at Leeds who married another of Tolkien’s Leeds students, Helen Tomlinson. After teaching in Birmingham and Upsalla, in 1930 he joined the English faculty at University College, London, first as Reader and later Lecturer in English, ultimately (after a hiatus of several years doing intelligence work during the War, for which he was decorated) succeeding R. W. Chambers as the Quain Professor in English (in 1949). A specialist in the study of place-name origins from the time of his Ph.D. thesis at Leeds (1926, published in 1928 as The Place-names of the North Riding [Yorkshire], with an acknowledgment to Tolkien for his encouragement and philological help), he published many more volumes on the subject covering Yorkshire’s East Riding and York itself [1937], Yorkshire’s West Riding [1961–63], Gloucestershire [1964–65], and Westmorland [1967], as well as English Place-Name Elements [1955], ultimately becoming Director of the English Place-Name Society [1951]. Other significant publications include assisting in the English translation of Erling Monsen’s edition of Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla: The Lives of the Norse Kings [1932], an edition of the earliest surviving manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (The Parker Chronicle [1935]), and helping to launch Methuen’s Old English Library [1933ff]. Smith’s interest in printing led him to build an Elizabethan-style hand press which he used to teach students how books like Shakespeare’s quartos were made; each seminar created its own little booklet as a class project. The second book thus printed was Tolkien’s Songs for the Philologists [1936], for which Smith apparently rewrote several of Tolkien’s Leeds-era originals.
J. Grove: ‘Aunt’ Jennie Grove, 1864–1938, a cousin of Tolkien’s wife Edith. Jennie Grove lived with Edith Bratt and her mother Francis until the latter’s death in 1903, when Edith was sent to a boarding school. She and Edith resumed living together upon Edith’s engagement to Tolkien in 1913 and she continued to live with Edith, JRRT, and later young John Tolkien as well until the family’s move to Leeds in 1921. She often returned at Christmastime in later years, having become ‘a substitute mother to Edith and the nearest thing her four children had to a grandmother’ (Family Album, page 36; her photograph appears on the same page). Her letter of thanks, dated 23-9-37 (i.e., 23rd September), expressing how ‘I am more than delighted with your lovely book . . . you clever old thing, I don’t know how you do it’, is now in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folios 122–4).
S. Mills: Stella M. Mills, 1903–1989, a research student who became a friend of the family. Another of Tolkien’s students from his Leeds days, like Tolkien she worked at one time on the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) under C. T. Onions, who completed the original edition of the OED in 1933. Her major academic work was a translation of The Saga of Hrolf Kraki [1933] – the same work which probably inspired the figure of Beorn Medwed; see the commentary on Chapter VII – which appeared with an introduction by E. V. Gordon (who supervised the work); Mills dedicated the volume to JRRT, EVG, and Onions. According to Scull & Hammond’s Companion & Guide, she later joined the staff of St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Oxford (C&G, Vol. II, page 590). Mills’ copy of The Hobbit recently surfaced in a rare book dealer’s catalogue; although extravagantly rebound, it still includes Tolkien’s inscription: ‘Stella Mills/from her old friend/J. R. R. Tolkien’.
WR Childe: W. R. (Wilfred Roland) Childe, 1890–1952, a colleague of Tolkien’s at Leeds from 1922 onwards as Lecturer on the ‘Lit’ (literature) side of the English School (as opposed to Tolkien’s own ‘Lang’ or language side). Godfather to Tolkien’s youngest son, Christopher. He was best known as a poet, one of the Georgian Poets – indeed, the compiler of the online index to the Oxford Poetry series describes him as ‘almost too Georgian to be true’ (http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/oxpoetry/index/ic.html).
Among his books of poetry are The Little City [1911], The Happy Garden [n.d.], The Gothic Rose [1922], The Hills of Morning [1923], Ivory Palaces [1925], and Selected Poems [1936]; he was also either a contributor or co-editor of Oxford Poetry for all the volumes between 1910 and 1919, except for 1914 and 1915 (the volume in which Tolkien’s own ‘Goblin Feet’ appeared), contributing pieces such as ‘The Fairy Land of Shipscar’, ‘The Lost Abbot of Gloucester’, and ‘Sea Fairy’. Tolkien noted in his request for Childe to be sent a copy of The Hobbit that Childe ‘is an old personal friend. He is specially interested in elves and related creatures. He was (once at any rate) a fairly well-known poet, and is still a good one’ (JRRT to A&U, 7th September 1937; A&U archive). In the same letter, Tolkien also notes that Childe ‘saw the MS and is well disposed’ – i.e., that he read the manuscript of The Hobbit before its publication. This is confirmed by Childe’s letter of thanks on 27th September 1937, in which he notes ‘It is a great pleasure to have it and I shall certainly read it again . . . I wish it all possible success, – which it fully deserves.’ (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 41). He follows this up with a postcard (dated 9-10-1937; i.e., 9th October) congratulating Tolkien on the reviews in the Times and Times Literary Supplement (ibid.).
Second Column
Ox Mag: The Oxford Magazine, a local university-focused journal which published Tolkien’s article ‘The Oxford English School’ in 1930 and no less than seven of his poems in the following years: ‘Progress in Bimble Town’ [1931], ‘Errantry’ [1933], ‘Looney’ (= ‘The Sea Bell’) and ‘The Adventures of Tom Bombadil’ [both 1934], and ‘The Dragon’s Visit’, ‘Knocking at the Door’ (= ‘The Mewlips’), and ‘Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden’ (= ‘The Hoard’) [on 4th February, 18th February, & 4th March 1937, respectively]. On 28th May 1937 in a letter to Charles Furth regarding publicity and the release date for the forthcoming book, Tolkien writes of getting ‘my friend the editor of the O.U. Magazine, who has been giving it a good dose of my dragon-lore recently, to . . . get a review at the beginning of the autumn term’. On 1st June, Furth writes that they are sending advance copies to both C. S. Lewis (see above) and ‘the Editor of “The Oxford University Magazine”’; on 8th July he elaborates that these are ‘unbound advance copies for their convenience . . . They will of course both receive proper review copies as well in due course’. In his reply, Tolkien provided the editor’s name (R[ussell] Meiggs) and address (Keble College), and an annotation in the margin on this letter by someone at Allen & Unwin indicates that Meigg’s copy was ‘Sent 14/7’ (i.e., 14th July). Meiggs’ undated letter in response, so enthusiastic that Tolkien passed it along to Furth (cf. Letters, page 20), was a self-described ‘uninvited testimonial’, declaring that the book should be ‘pushed to save children from the sentimental saccharine that is so often foisted on them’ and declaring that ‘it solves the Christmas problem for a large number of god-children and it will increase my prestige with my sister’s youngest, who is a discriminating . . . public.’ (MS. Tolkien 21, folio 24).
Russell Meiggs, 1902–1989, was a Classicist; a ‘Greats’ tutor apparently at Keble at the time of The Hobbit’s publication, who in 1939 became Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Balliol (1939–1970), adding to this the post of Prefect of Holywell Manor (a residence hall at Balliol) from 1945 to 1969. He is mainly known for his work on the ancient port of Rome, Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber (Roman Ostia [1960]), though he also published on The Athenian Empire [1972], Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean [1982], and updated J. B. Bury’s A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great [1900; rev. ed. 1978].
Book Soc.: possibly the group more formally known as the Society of Bookmen, a club founded by the novelist Hugh Walpole in 1921 (and still thriving today), drawing its membership from literary and publishing folk. Its stated purpose was to encourage ‘authors, printers, publishers, binders, or salesmen to get together in the interests of their trade’. Membership is by personal invitation, for life, and was originally limited to seventy-five. It has been said that ‘nearly every important book trade issue in the last half century had its first airing at a meeting of the Society’ (The Society of Bookmen: An Informal History, 1921–1984); Stanley Unwin called it ‘a small but representative body whose one and only object is the advancement of the knowledge and appreciation of good literature’ (The Truth About Publishing [6th edition, 1950], page 260).
Tolkien wrote to Charles Furth on 13th August 1937 that ‘The Book Society enquiry was due to the kindness of George Gordon (P[resident] of Magdalen), who acted with great promptness’ and asked that they send Gordon a personal copy, since Tolkien’s own spare copy he had loaned to Gordon ‘has been carried off by some member of the party’; this suggests that Gordon had been championing The Hobbit at the group’s most recent meeting. Furth replied on 16th August 1937 that they were not only replacing Tolkien’s lost copy but sending Dr. Gordon an advance copy as well and not counting either against Tolkien’s author’s copies (A&U archive). Hence Tolkien’s cancellation of both this and the next entry on the list, and his reminder to himself: ‘have’.
GSG: George S. Gordon, 1881–1942, who as head of the English School at Leeds had been instrumental in getting Tolkien his appointment there in 1920. In 1922 he became Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, from which post he played a decisive role in getting JRRT elected to the Rawlinson and Bosworth professorship at Oxford in 1925. In 1928 he was elected President of Magdalen College, and at the time of The Hobbit’s publication had added to this the Professorship of Poetry (a five-year appointment, from 1933–38); after this (1938) he became Vice-Chancellor of the University as well. More a ‘man of letters’ in the mode of earlier figures, like Leslie Stephen and Edmund Gosse, than a scholar in the modern academic sense, Gordon’s essays (collected into such volumes as Companionable Books [1925] and The Discipline of Letters [1946]) cover a wide range of topics, from Pepys to Sterne to Shelley to ‘The Trojans in Britain’ ([1924], a paean to invented mythic history). His greatest gifts, however, lay in administration: in his memoir of Gordon (Letters, pages 56–8) Tolkien called him ‘the very master of men’ and stated that ‘my. . . first thoughts of him are always of personal gratitude, of a friend rather than of an academic figure’ who always showed kindness and thoughtfulness towards his subordinates. Gordon was a member of the Kolbítars (‘Coal-biters’), a group Tolkien founded in 1926 to read all the major sagas in the original Old Icelandic; he also collaborated with Tolkien on an unfinished edition of Chaucer (Selections from Chaucer’s Poetry and Prose, a.k.a. ‘the Clarendon Chaucer’; cf. Scull & Hammond, Companion & Guide Vol. II, pages 153–6). His enthusiasm for The Hobbit was well known: cf. Tolkien’s letter to Charles Furth on 31st August 1937, where Tolkien notes that ‘Professor Gordon has actually read the book (supposed to be a rare event); and assures me that he will recommend it generally and to the Book Society’ (Letters, page 20).
Hilary: Hilary Tolkien, 1894–1976, Tolkien’s brother. Unlike his academically-minded older brother, Hilary was a fruit farmer, with ‘a small orchard and market garden’ (Companion & Guide, Vol. II, page 1017) near Evesham (home, incidently, of a famous Green Dragon pub), about forty miles northwest of Oxford, roughly mid-way between Gloucester and Stratford-upon-Avon. His letter of thanks to ‘Dear R’, dated 24th September 1937, is now in the Bodleian; in it he invites his brother’s family for a visit and thanks JRRT for ‘the most delightful present of the Hobbit. . . I should have written before but I have been simply devouring your book. . . my great sorrow is that there seems no picture of Bilbo Baggins or the Gollum. . . when the fame of your Hobbit has spread I feel sure others will want to see what he was like . . . I wish your book every success . . . as soon as I have read it all I shall read it to Gabriel [Hilary’s oldest son, then aged six] who is always to be found peeping into it in the early morning’ (MS. Tolkien 21, folios 127–8). For more on Hilary, see Carpenter’s Tolkien: A Biography, the Family Album, Scull & Hammond’s Companion & Guide, Vol. II, pages 1016–1017, Andrew H. Morton’s Tolkien’s Gedling–1914, and the brief biography in the back of Black & White Ogre Country, ed. Angela Gardner [2009].
From the surviving evidence we can say that Tolkien presented the book to colleagues, former students, and collaborators (three categories with considerable overlap in his case), as well as relatives and family friends. This of course is not a complete listing of everyone to whom Tolkien gave copies of The Hobbit – for example, he sent a copy to Mrs. Ruth Smith (Companion & Guide Vol. II, page 942), the mother of Tolkien’s childhood friend and fellow TCBS member G. B. Smith [died 1916], whose poems Tolkien had edited as A Spring Harvest [1918], although so far as we know he did not do so to his former headmaster R. C. Gilson [died 1939], father of Rob Gilson [died 1916], Tolkien’s other close friend and fellow TCBS member killed in the War; nor to Christopher Wiseman, the sole other survivor with Tolkien of the TCBS; nor to his former teacher R. W. ‘Dickie’ Reynolds [died 1948], for whom Tolkien had written ‘The Sketch of the Mythology’ in 1926. Father Francis would undoubtedly have been included had he not died about a year and a half before, in 1935. Nor, aside from Lewis and Wrenn (both fellow medievalists), did any other member of the Inklings make the list, although we know The Hobbit was read to the group (probably upon completion of the typescript in the early autumn of 1936) and they would figure prominently in the creation of its sequel.
We should also note that this listing does not include those who were given copies of the Houghton Mifflin edition when it came out early the following year, which seem to have gone mainly to fellow academics and medievalists in America and Canada such as Francis Magoun of Harvard and Kemp Malone of Johns Hopkins. Magoun’s letter of thanks, dated 6th June 1938, is now in the Bodleian (MS. Tolkien 21, folios 83–4); in it he mentions having seen the illustrations in Oxford the summer of the year before, suggesting that Tolkien showed them to him during a visit. After praising the book as a mix of Kipling and Carroll, he goes on to say ‘I hope you will do another or others before the children get too old or not old enough. The youngest daughter is just a year, so you have time!’