138 From a letter to Christopher Tolkien

[Galley-proofs of the first volume of The Lord of the Rings were sent to Tolkien in mid-July.]

4 August 1953

The galleys are proving rather a bore! There seem such an endless lot of them ; and they have put me very much out of conceit with pans of the Great Work, which seems, I must confess, in print very long-winded in parts. But the printing is very good, as it ought to be from an almost faultless copy; except that the impertinent compositors have taken it upon themselves to correct, as they suppose, my spelling and grammar: altering throughout dwarves to dwarfs; elvish to elfish; further to farther; and worst of all, elven – to elfin. I let off my irritation in a snorter to A. and U. which produced a grovel.