125 To Sir Stanley Unwin

[Unwin replied on 6 March, asking if the problem of the combined length of the two books might be solved by splitting them into 'three or four to some extent self-contained volumes'. In response to Tolkien's enquiry about Farmer Giles of Ham, he reported that, out of the first printing of 5,000 copies, 2,000 had been sold, and that the book had 'not yet done as well as we had hoped', though he said it would undoubtedly continue to sell.]

10 March 1950

3 Manor Road, Oxford

Dear Unwin,

Thank you for your letter of March 6th. I see in it your good will ; but also, I fear, your opinion that this mass of stuff is not really a publisher's affair at all, but requires an endowment. I am not surprised.

With regard to your enquiry about its divisibility. A work of great length can, of course, be divided up artificially into more handy bulks: the sort of process that produced sections of the big Oxford Dictionary labelled 'ONOMASTICAL – OUTING' and 'SIMPLE to SLEEP'. But the whole Saga of the Three Jewels and the Rings of Power has only one natural division into two parts (each of about 600,000 words): The Silmarillion and other legends; and The Lord of the Rings. The latter is as indivisible and unified as I could make it.

It is, of course, divided into sections for narrative purposes (six of them), and two or three of these, which are of more or less equal length, could be bound separately, but they are not in any sense self-contained.

I now wonder (I must confess, though as a 'seller' I suppose I should show more confidence) whether many beyond my friends, not all of whom have endured to the end, would read anything so long, even if they liked that kind of thing in moderation. I wonder still more if they would read, not to mention purchase, it serially, and if the pot, as it were, went off the boil. You must know much more about that than I do.

I realise the financial difficulties, and the remote chance of recovering the great cost. I have no money to sink in the bog, and I can hardly expect you to sink it. Please do not think that I shall feel that I have a just grievance if you decline to become involved, without much hesitation. After all the understanding was that you would welcome a sequel to The Hobbit, and this work can not be regarded as such in any practical sense, or in the matter of atmosphere, tone, or audience addressed.

I am sorry that I presented such a problem. Wilfully, it may seem, since I knew long ago that I was courting trouble and producing the unprintable and unsaleable, most likely. I have not at the moment anything else completed to submit; but I am quite prepared to make something simpler and shorter soon. I feel, at the end of my leave of absence, a return of energy, and when the present time of trial is over (the process of removing all my teeth began yesterday, and that of removing my household goods begins shortly) I hope to feel still more. I think I shall soon put in hand other things long in petto.

All the same it would have been more encouraging if Farmer Giles could report better of his luck. Rather a donnish little squib after all? I cannot discover that he has been widely heard of. He does not seem to have been very forcibly brought to notice.

I always thought, that in so far as he has virtue, it would have been improved by other stories of the same kingdom and style; but the domination of the remoter world was so great that I could not make them. It may now prove different.

With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
J. R. R. Tolkien.