Editor | Baillie Tolkien |
---|---|
Author | J. R. R. Tolkien |
Original title | The Father Christmas Letters |
Illustrator | J. R. R. Tolkien |
Cover artist | J. R. R. Tolkien |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Genre | Fantasy, children's literature |
Publisher | Allen and Unwin (1976) Houghton Mifflin (1976) HarperCollins (2004) |
Publication date | 1976, reprinted in 2004 |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
ISBN | 0-395-24981-3 (1976) ISBN 0-261-10386-5 (2004) |
OCLC | 2603606 |
LC Class | PZ7.T5744 Fat4 |
Preceded by | Bilbo's Last Song |
Followed by | The Silmarillion |
Letters from Father Christmas, formerly known as The Father Christmas Letters, are a collection of letters written and illustrated by J. R. R. Tolkien between 1920 and 1943 for his children, from Father Christmas. They were released posthumously by the Tolkien estate on 2 September 1976, the 3rd anniversary of Tolkien's death. They were edited by Baillie Tolkien, second wife of his youngest son, Christopher. The book was warmly received by critics, and it has been suggested that elements of the stories inspired parts of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings .
The stories are told in the format of a series of letters, told either from the point of view of Father Christmas or his elvish secretary. They document the adventures and misadventures of Father Christmas and his helpers, including the North Polar Bear and his two sidekick cubs, Paksu and Valkotukka. The stories include descriptions of the massive fireworks that create the northern lights and how Polar Bear manages to get into trouble on more than one occasion.
The 1939 letter has Father Christmas making reference to the Second World War, [1] while some of the later letters feature Father Christmas' battles against Goblins which were subsequently interpreted as being a reflection of Tolkien's views on the German Menace. [2]
The letters themselves were written over a period of over 20 years to entertain Tolkien's children each Christmas. Starting in 1920 when Tolkien's oldest son was aged three, [1] each Christmas Tolkien would write a letter from Father Christmas about his travels and adventures. [3] Each letter was delivered in an envelope, including North Pole stamps and postage marks as designed by Tolkien. [4]
Prior to publication, an exhibition of Tolkien's drawings was held at the Ashmolean Museum. These included works from The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings, and the Letters from Father Christmas. [5] [6] The first edition was published by Allen and Unwin on 2 September 1976 under the name The Father Christmas Letters, three years after Tolkien's death. The Houghton Mifflin edition was released later that year on 19 October. [7] It was the third work by Tolkien to be released posthumously, after a collection of poems and the Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings . [8] Edited by Baillie Tolkien, [9] the second wife of Christopher Tolkien, [1] it includes illustrations by Tolkien for nearly all the letters; however, it omitted several letters and drawings. [10]
When the book was republished in 1999, it was retitled Letters from Father Christmas and several letters and drawings not contained in the original edition were added. [10] [11] One edition in 1995 featured the letters and drawings contained in individual envelopes to be read in the manner they were originally conceived to be. [12]
The reception to the first two works published posthumously had been warm, which was subsequently thought to be due to Tolkien's recent death. The response to the Letters from Father Christmas was much more measured and balanced. [8] Jessica Kemball-Cook suggested in her book Twentieth Century Children's Writers that it would become known as a classic of children's literature, [13] while Nancy Willard for The New York Times Book Review also received the book positively, saying "Father Christmas lives. And never more merrily than in these pages." [1] In 2002, an article in The Independent on Sunday described the work as rivalling "The Lord of the Rings for sheer imaginative joy". [3] In 2023, an extract from one of the Letters from Father Christmas was read out by actor Jim Broadbent at the televised 'Together at Christmas' carol service in Westminster Abbey on Friday 8th December, broadcast to the nation on Christmas Eve that year. [14]
Paul H. Kocher, whilst writing for the journal Mythprint, suggested that the creatures in the Letters from Father Christmas may have been a precursor to those which appeared in Tolkien's later works such as The Lord of the Rings , [15] a view which was shared by Laurence and Martha Krieg in a review in the journal Mythlore (issue #14). [16] For example, the 1933 letter features an attack on Polar Bear by a band of goblins. The Kriegs suggested that the wizard Gandalf may have been developed from Father Christmas. [16]
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit, but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. The book is recognized as a classic in children's literature and is one of the best-selling books of all time, with over 100 million copies sold.
Christopher John Reuel Tolkien was an English and naturalised French academic editor. The son of author and academic J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien edited much of his father's posthumously published work, including The Silmarillion and the 12-volume series The History of Middle-Earth. Tolkien also drew the original maps for his father's The Lord of the Rings.
Thorin Oakenshield is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit. Thorin is the leader of the Company of Dwarves who aim to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from Smaug the dragon. He is the son of Thráin II, grandson of Thrór, and becomes King of Durin's Folk during their exile from Erebor. Thorin's background is further elaborated in Appendix A of Tolkien's 1955 novel The Return of the King, and in Unfinished Tales.
Tom Bombadil is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He first appeared in print in a 1934 poem called "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil", which also included The Lord of the Rings characters Goldberry, Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wight, from whom he rescues the hobbits. They were not then explicitly part of the older legends that became The Silmarillion, and are not mentioned in The Hobbit.
The Rings of Power are magical artefacts in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, most prominently in his high fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The One Ring first appeared as a plot device, a magic ring in Tolkien's children's fantasy novel, The Hobbit; Tolkien later gave it a backstory and much greater power. He added nineteen other Great Rings, also conferring powers such as invisibility, that it could control, including the Three Rings of the Elves, Seven Rings for the Dwarves, and Nine for Men. He stated that there were in addition many lesser rings with minor powers. A key story element in The Lord of the Rings is the addictive power of the One Ring, made secretly by the Dark Lord Sauron; the Nine Rings enslave their bearers as the Nazgûl (Ringwraiths), Sauron's most deadly servants.
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth is a collection of stories and essays by J. R. R. Tolkien that were never completed during his lifetime, but were edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and published in 1980. Many of the tales within are retold in The Silmarillion, albeit in modified forms; the work also contains a summary of the events of The Lord of the Rings told from a less personal perspective.
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is a 1962 collection of poetry by J. R. R. Tolkien. The book contains 16 poems, two of which feature Tom Bombadil, a character encountered by Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. The rest of the poems are an assortment of bestiary verse and fairy tale rhyme. Three of the poems appear in The Lord of the Rings as well. The book is part of Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium.
Pauline Diana Baynes was an English illustrator, author, and commercial artist. She contributed drawings and paintings to more than 200 books, mostly in the children's genre. She was the first illustrator of some of J. R. R. Tolkien's minor works and of C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, the Eagles or Great Eagles, are immense birds that are sapient and can speak. The Great Eagles resemble actual eagles, but are much larger. Thorondor is said to have been the greatest of all birds, with a wingspan of 30 fathoms. Elsewhere, the Eagles have varied in nature and size both within Tolkien's writings and in later adaptations.
J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator is a collection of paintings and drawings by J. R. R. Tolkien for his stories, published posthumously in 1995. The book was edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull. It won the 1996 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies. The nature and importance of Tolkien's artwork is discussed.
The term Middle-earth canon, also called Tolkien's canon, is used for the published writings of J. R. R. Tolkien regarding Middle-earth as a whole. The term is also used in Tolkien fandom to promote, discuss and debate the idea of a consistent fictional canon within a given subset of Tolkien's writings.
During 1955 and 1956, a condensed radio dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings was broadcast in twelve episodes on BBC Radio's the Third Programme. These radio broadcasts were the first dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings, a book by J. R. R. Tolkien, the final volume of which, The Return of the King, had been published in October 1955. Since the BBC did not generally keep long-term archives of its productions at that time, no copies of the full adaptation are known to have survived. A single clip from a 2016 radio special by BBC Sounds can be heard around the four-minute mark of the recording playing the opening theme of the series. Although virtually all audio of the series is lost, and the script too had been thought lost, in 2022 the Tolkien scholar Stuart Lee rediscovered the full script for the dramatization in the BBC archives, including annotations by Tolkien himself. Lee's research on the script was published as an essay in The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien (2022).
The Tolkien family is an English family of German descent whose best-known member is J. R. R. Tolkien, Oxford academic and author of the fantasy books The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his The Lord of the Rings, and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of The Silmarillion and documented in his 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth. The legendarium's origins reach back to 1914, when Tolkien began writing poems and story sketches, drawing maps, and inventing languages and names as a private project to create a unique English mythology. The earliest story drafts are from 1916; he revised and rewrote these for most of his adult life.
This is a list of all published works of the English writer and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien's works were published before and after his death.
An orc, in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy fiction, is a race of humanoid monsters, which he also calls "goblin".
Tolkien's scripts are the writing systems invented by the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien. The best-known are Cirth, Sarati, and Tengwar.
J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, created what he came to feel was a dilemma for himself with his supposedly evil Middle-earth peoples like Orcs, when he made them able to speak, and portrayed them talking about right and wrong. This meant, he believed, that they were open to morality, like Men. In Tolkien's Christian framework, that in turn meant they must have souls, so killing them would be wrong without very good reason. Orcs serve as the principal forces of the enemy in The Lord of the Rings, where they are slaughtered in large numbers in the battles of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor Fields in particular.