149 From a letter to Rayner Unwin

[Reviews of The Fellowship of the Ring began to appear during August.]

9 September 1954

As for the reviews they were a great deal better than I feared, and I think might have been better still, if we had not quoted the Ariosto remark, or indeed got involved at all with the extraordinary animosity that C.S.L. seems to excite in certain quarters. He warned me long ago that his support might do me as much harm as good. I did not take it seriously, though in any case I should not have wished other than to be associated with him – since only by his support and friendship did I ever struggle to the end of the labour. All the same many commentators seem to have preferred lampooning his remarks or his review to reading the book.

The (unavoidable) disadvantage of issuing in three pans has been shown in the 'shapelessness' that several readers have found, since that is true if one volume is supposed to stand alone. 'Trilogy', which is not really accurate, is partly to blame. There is too much 'hobbitry' in Vol. I taken by itself; and several critics have obviously not got far beyond Chapter I.

I must say that I was unfortunate in coming into the hands of the D. Telegraph, during the absence of Betjeman. My work is not in his line, but he at any rate is neither ignorant nor a gutter-boy. Peter Green seems to be both. I do not know him or of him, but he is so rude as to make one suspect malice. Though actually I think 'the cold in his head' made it more convenient for him to use Edwin Muir in the Observer and Lambert in the S. Times, with a slight hotting up of the above.

I am most puzzled by the remarks on the style. I do not expect, and did not expect, many to be amused by hobbits, or interested in the general story and its modes, but the discrepancy in the judgements on the style (which one would have thought referable to standards independent of personal liking) are very odd – from laudatory quotation to 'Boys Own Paper' (which has no one style)!

I gather that you are not wholly dissatisfied. But there have been some very appreciative notices apart from C.S.L. (who had the advantage of knowing the whole), though not usually in the high places. Cherryman in Truth and Howard Spring in C. Life were pleasing to one's vanity, and also Cherryman's ending: that he would turn eagerly to the second and third volumes! May others feel the same!

Fawcett in the M. Guardian was complimentary in brief; and I was specially interested by a long notice in the Oxford Times (by the editor himself) in being by one quite outside the ring, and he seemed to have enjoyed himself. He sent an interviewer up, but what he will chum out for the O. Mail this week I do not know. ....

Well, this letter is already inordinately long. In the midst of it Professor d'Ardenne of Liege has arrived to harass me with philological work on which we are supposed to be engaged.