151 From a letter to Hugh Brogan 

18 September 1954

If you want my opinion, a pan of the 'fascination' [of The Lord of the Rings] consists in the vistas of yet more legend and history, to which this work does not contain a full clue. For the present we had better leave it at that. If there is a fault in the work which I myself clearly perceive, it is that I have perhaps overweighted Part I too much with attempts to depict the setting and historical background in the course of the narrative. Of course, in actual fact, this background already 'exists', that is, is written, and was written first. But I could not get it published, in chronological order, until and unless a public could be found for the mixture of Elvish and Númenórean legend with the Hobbits. ....

Your preference of goblins to orcs involves a large question and a matter of taste, and perhaps historical pedantry on my pan. Personally I prefer Orcs (since these creatures are not 'goblins', not even the goblins of George MacDonald, which they do to some extent resemble). Also I now deeply regret having used Elves, though this is a word in ancestry and original meaning suitable enough. But the disastrous debasement of this word, in which Shakespeare played an unforgiveable pan, has really overloaded it with regrettable tones, which are too much to overcome. I hope in the Appendices to Vol. III to be able to include a note 'On translation' in which the matter of equivalences and my uses may be made clearly. My difficulty has been that, since I have tried to present a kind of legendary and history of a 'forgotten epoch', all the specific terms were in a foreign language, and no precise equivalents exist in English. ....

I am more than grateful to you for one thing: apart from one line in the Manchester Guardian no one else has yet even referred to the fact that there are any verses in the book – or I think not. ....

Frodo is not intended to be another Bilbo. Though his opening style is not wholly un-kin. But he is rather a study of a hobbit broken by a burden of fear and horror — broken down, and in the end made into something quite different. None of the hobbits come out of it in pure Shire-fashion. They wouldn't. But you have got Samwise Gamwichy (or Gamgee).

Middle-earth is just archaic English for ἡοἰκονμένη, the inhabited world of men. It lay then as it does. In fact just as it does, round and inescapable. That is partly the point. The new situation, established at the beginning of the Third Age, leads on eventually and inevitably to ordinary History, and we here see the process culminating. If you or I or any of the mortal men (or hobbits) of Frodo's day had set out over sea, west, we should, as now, eventually have come back (as now) to our starting point. Gone was the 'mythological' time when Valinor (or Valimar), the Land of the Valar (gods if you will) existed physically in the Uttermost West, or the Eldaic (Elvish) immortal Isle of Eressëa; or the Great Isle of Westernesse (Númenor-Atlantis). After the Downfall of Númenor, and its destruction, all this was removed from the 'physical' world, and not reachable by material means. Only the Eldar (or High-Elves) could still sail thither, forsaking time and mortality, but never returning.

Very many thanks for remembering the ageing Professor, and bracing him up with your letter. I know 21/- is a frightful price, but don't forget that I have to sell an awful lot before the ghastly expenses are paid off. The fact that I get not a halfpenny until that is done, does not matter so much, as this: if enough are sold I may be able to publish more. So add to your great kindness in inducing such as you can to beg borrow or steal a guinea rather than a copy!

Pictures are far too expensive, even if I had sufficent skill to do them and cut out artist's fees. I tried, but alas! can only draw v. imperfectly what I can, and not what I see. The wrapper is all that survived of three separate designs I made, one for each pan. Part I was to have been all black with red and gold letters, and the three opposing rings: Narya (red), Vilya (blue), Nenya (white). . . . . But it was reduced; and the lovely (I thought) facsimiles of the 3 burned pages of the Book of Mazarbul also vanished – so that folk could have the thing at the trifling cost of 21/-!