114 From a letter to Hugh Brogan

[Brogan, then a schoolboy, had written to Tolkien praising The Hobbit and asking for more information about the world it described.]

7 April 1948

I am glad you enjoyed 'the Hobbit'. I have in fact been engaged for ten years on writing another (longer) work about the same world and period of history, in which at any rate all can be learned about the Necromancer and the mines of Moria. Only the difficulty of writing the last chapters, and the shortage of paper have so far prevented its printing. I hope at least to finish it this year, and will certainly let you have advance information. I wrote long ago (and passed the proofs a year ago) another (short) work on a rather different period: Farmer Giles of Ham. I don't know what, beyond paper, is holding it up, but it should appear this autumn or winter. But it will not satisfy any curiosity about the older world. I am afraid you would not find any information about that in ordinary works of reference, since I possess all the documents, and publishers won't publish them. What you really require is The Silmarillion, which is virtually a history of the Eldalië (or Elves, by a not very accurate translation) from their rise to the Last Alliance, and the first temporary overthrow of Sauron (the Necromancer): that would bring you nearly down to the period of The Hobbit'. Also desirable would be some maps, chronological tables, and some elementary information about the Eldarin (or Elvish) languages. I have got all those things, of course, and they are known in a small circle which includes my sons (all once at the Dragon School). If I can find some time and way of reproducing them, or part of them, say in typescript, and you remain interested in this little-explored region of pre-history, I will let you have some of the documents.