115 To Katherine Farrer

[Mrs Farrer had apparently expressed a desire to read The Silmarillion and related manuscripts.]

15 June [year not given; possibly 1948]

Merton College, Oxford

Dear Mrs Farrer,

I am sorry that I have been so long in replying and so may have seemed ungrateful, when I was really very touched by your kind letter – and also excited. For though I have (in the cracks of time!) laboured at these things since about 1914,1 have never found anyone but C.S.L. and my Christopher who wanted to read them; and no one will publish them. I have spent what time I could spare since you wrote in collecting out of the unfinished mass such things as are more or less finished and readable (I mean legible). You may find the 'compendious history' or Silmarillion tolerable – though it is only really half-revised.

The long tales out of which it is drawn (by 'Pengolod') are either incomplete or not up to date.

The Fall of Gondolin
The Lay of Beren and Lúthien (verse)
The Children of Húrin

I am distressed (for myself) to be unable to find the 'Rings of Power', which with the 'Fall of Númenor' is the link between the Silmarillion and the Hobbit world. But its essentials are included in Ch. II of The Lord of the Rings. That book would, of course, be easier to write, if the Silmarillion were published first!

I will bring you round some unique MSS. some time to-day.

Thank you for your remembrance in prayer.

Yrs sincerely
Ronald Tolkien.