215 To Walter Allen, New Statesman (drafts)

[Tolkien was asked to contribute to a symposium to be published in a Children's Book Supplement of the New Statesman. He was told: 'The kind of questions we should hope you would consider are : how far do you write with a specific audience in mind, i.e. how do you feel writing for children differs from writing for adult readers ? To what extent do you feel that writing for children satisfies a need in yourself, for example, by expressing a side of you repressed in ordinary life or by the exigencies of writing for adults? How do you see the relation between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring [sic] ? Are you conscious of a didactic purpose, and if so, how do you construe it?']

[Not dated; April 1959.]

Dear Mr Allen,

I am very sorry, but I shall not be able to take pan in the symposium. I have only recently returned from convalescence after an operation, and am faced with much neglected work. Term begins on April 24.

I have said all that I have to say about writing for children in my contribution: 'On Fairy-Stories': to Essays Presented to Charles Williams (O.U.P. 1947). It has no special interest to me.

When I published The Hobbit – hurriedly and without due consideration – I was still influenced by the convention that 'fairy-stories' are naturally directed to children (with or without the silly added waggery 'from seven to seventy'). And I had children of my own. But the desire to address children, as such, had nothing to do with the story as such in itself or the urge to write it. But it had some unfortunate effects on the mode of expression and narrative method, which if I had not been rushed, I should have corrected. Intelligent children of good taste (of which there seem quite a number) have always, I am glad to say, singled out the points in manner where the address is to children as blemishes.

I had given a great deal more thought to the matter before beginning the composition of The Lord of the Rings; and that work was not specially addressed to children or to any other class of people. But to any one who enjoyed a long exciting story, of the son that I myself naturally enjoy. ....

I am not specially interested in children, and certainly not in writing for them: i.e. in addressing directly and expressly those who cannot understand adult language.

I write things that might be classified as fairy-stories not because I wish to address children (who qua children I do not believe to be specially interested in this kind of fiction) but because I wish to write this kind of story and no other.

I do this because if I do not apply too grandiloquent a title to it I find that my comment on the world is most easily and naturally expressed in this way. I am not conscious of any repression exerted upon me by 'ordinary life'. Since large numbers of adults seem to enjoy what I write – quite enough to keep me happy – I have no need to seek escape to another and (possibly) less exigent audience.

I hope 'comment on the world' does not sound too solemn. I have no didactic purpose, and no allegorical intent. (I do not like allegory (properly so called: most readers appear to confuse it with significance or applicability) but that is a matter too long to deal with here.) But long narratives cannot be made out of nothing; and one cannot rearrange the primary matter in secondary patterns without indicating feelings and opinions about one's material. ....

The relation between The Hobbit and its sequel is I think this. The Hobbit is a first essay or introduction (consideration will admit I think that it is a very just point at which to begin the narration of the subsequent events) to a complex narrative which had been brewing in my mind for years. It was overtly addressed to children for two reasons : I had at that time children of my own and was accustomed to making up (ephemeral) stories for them; I had been brought up to believe that there was a real and special connexion between children and fairy-stories. Or rather to believe that this was a received opinion of my world and of publishers. I doubted it, since it did not accord with my personal experience of my own taste, nor with my observation of children (notably my own). But the convention was strong.

I think that The Hobbit can be seen to begin in what might be called a more 'whimsy' mode, and in places even more facetious, and move steadily to a more serious or significant, and more consistent and historical. .... But I regret much of it all the same. ....

The first question, it seems to me, to ask in any discussion of this kind is : What are 'Children' ? Do you limit your enquiry, as may be supposed, to (North) European children? Then in what ages between the cradle and the end of legal infancy? To what grades of intelligence? Or literary talent and perceptiveness? Some intelligent children may have little of this. Children's tastes and talents differ as widely as those of adults, as soon as they are old enough to be differentiated clearly, and therefore to be the target of any thing that can bear the name of literature. It would be useless to offer to many children of 14 or even of 12 the trash that is good enough for many respectable adults of twice or three times the age, but less gifts natural.

Life is rather above the measure of us all (save for a very few perhaps). We all need literature that is above our measure – though we may not have sufficient energy for it all the time. But the energy of youth is usually greater. Youth needs then less than adulthood or Age what is down to its (supposed) measure. But even in Age I think we only are really moved by what is at least in some point or aspect above us, above our measure, at any rate before we have read it and 'taken it in'. Therefore do not write down to Children or to anybody. Not even in language. Though it would be a good thing if that great reverence which is due to children took the form of eschewing the tired and flabby cliches of adult life. But an honest word is an honest word, and its acquaintance can only be made by meeting it in a right context. A good vocabulary is not acquired by reading books written according to some notion of the vocabulary of one's age-group. It comes from reading books above one.

[The draft ends here. The following is the letter that Tolkien actually sent to the New Statesman on 17 April:]

Dear Mr Allen,

I very much regret that it seems impossible for me to take pan in this symposium that you propose. I have only recently returned from convalescence after an operation and I am faced with much neglected work. Term begins next week and I shall not have time to produce any copy before April 19th.

Yours sincerely,
J. R. R. Tolkien.