J R R Tolkien was a prolific writer of letters. An immense number of these survive, ranging across his personal notes to family members, dispatches from his scholarly life in Oxford, and reflections on the inspirations behind The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-55). After his death in 1973, a selection of them – the closest we can get to an actual autobiography – were published in 1981. An expanded edition of his correspondence, including hundreds of previously unseen letters, several extracts of which are reproduced below, is published this month. It reveals new insights into the mind of one of England’s greatest storytellers.

To Michael Tolkien, February 12 1937

Tolkien’s second son, Michael, was a 16-year-old boarder at the Catholic Oratory School in Berkshire, previously attended by his older brother, John.

My dearest Mick,

… Once you begin to let Greek get out of the ­centre of the picture it tends to drop back. You have not been doing Greek very long! It takes at least 15 years to make a good Greek scholar. I never dropped it until I had taken Honour Mods (dropped it as a main ­official subject, that is) and yet managed to do my barbaric languages and a good deal of history. But I am ­willing my dear man that your real tastes should rule in the end. If you really and honestly wish to turn yourself into an historian (mediæval and ­modern), then, of course, you can begin to steer that way. I am not sure that it is sound at your age. You will permanently regret it later on if you do not pursue your Greek until it becomes a real possession. But – you shall do as you like. Only I would wait a moment before you decide …

Squash – backhand. Sounds as if you were not ­putting thumb along the stem of racquet when ­making a back-hand stroke. Try it – gives a lot of strength to a weak hand … God bless you. I want to see you again. We miss you daily.

To CA Furth, Allen & Unwin, May 13 1937

Allen & Unwin told Tolkien that they had interested “one of the outstanding firms of American publishers” in The Hobbit, which had suggested a number of illustrations in addition to those he had already supplied.

I am divided between knowledge of my own ­inability and fear of what American artists ­(doubtless of ­admirable skill) might produce. In any case I agree that all the illustrations ought to be by the same hand: four professional pictures would make my own ­amateurish productions look rather silly. I have some “pictures” in my drawer, but though they ­represent scenes from the mythology on the outskirts of which the Hobbit had his adventures, they do not really illustrate his story. The only possible one is the ­original coloured version of Mirkwood (re-drawn in black and white for “the Hobbit”) … It might be advisable, rather than lose the American interest, to let the Americans do what seems good to them – as long as it was possible (I should like to add) to veto anything from or influenced by the Disney studios (for all whose works I have a heartfelt loathing).

To Stanley Unwin, October 15 1937

Tolkien’s publisher, Unwin, had passed on a letter from the author Richard Hughes, who had been given a copy of The Hobbit, published the previous month. Hughes wrote: “… it is one of the best stories for children I have come across for a very long time … The only snag I can see is that many parents … may be afraid that certain parts of it would be too terrifying for bedside reading.”

Dear Mr Unwin,

… My daughter [Priscilla], aged eight, has long ­distinguished between literary and actual terrors. She can take any amount of dragon, and a ­reasonable dose of goblin; but we recently had to change all the handles on the chest-of-drawers in her room, because the former handles “grinned at her”, even in the dark. Not the subject matter but the time is the real mistake. “Bed-time” is usually a foolish parental indulgence, popular of course because so many of the young folk will do anything to postpone the fatal moment. But as far as I can see arithmetic is quite as likely to produce disordered sleep as dragons if administered (or self administered) too late …

At the moment I am suffering like Mr Baggins from a touch of “staggerment”, and I hope I am not taking myself too seriously. But I must confess that your letter has aroused in me a faint hope. I mean, I begin to wonder whether duty and desire may not (perhaps) in future go more closely together. I have spent nearly all the vacation times of 17 years examining, and doing things of that sort, driven by immediate financial necessity (mainly medical and educational). Writing stories in prose or verse has been stolen, often guiltily, from time already ­mortgaged, and has been broken and ineffective. I may perhaps now do what I much desire to do, and not fail of financial duty. Perhaps!

I think “Oxford” interest is mildly aroused. I am constantly asked how my hobbit is. The attitude is (as I foresaw) not unmixed with surprise and a ­little pity. My own college is I think good for about six ­copies, if only in order to find material for teasing me. Appearance in The Times convinced one or two of my more sedate colleagues that they could admit knowledge of my “fantasy” (ie indiscretion) without loss of ­academic dignity. 

To Michael Tolkien, July 12 1940

Michael was now stationed with his regiment near Thame.

My beloved boy,

… Let us get this straight: I do not and never have felt your love for A ridiculous. Nothing could be less ridiculous than a young man’s feelings of that kind, even if it does not ripen into final love or end in ­marriage. My only advice was not to make any ­permanent pledges or involve your honourable word at present. That is merely the wisdom of age, which knows that life is uncertain and man ­variable. Except for very rare events in love, a good man is capable of loving more than one woman: I mean that the chances of life (or God) determine largely whom he shall fall in love with, and whom it will prove in the end possible for him to marry. Though you ­probably feel (and ought to feel) that nothing will make you change, it may not be so, and A is young and might change herself. But I don’t think it ridiculous. I was less old than you when I met your mother, and I have remained faithful ever since. But that was not the first time I had felt “in love”. But in no case was it ridiculous, and it always worked as an aid to resisting the temptations of youth. God bless you. You shall certainly never be forbidden by me to write to A, and to see her. 

As for your dear mother: you have to realise that you are now up against a fundamental ­difficulty of life, which needs care and tact. Sons are ­peculiarly dear to mothers, although it often takes the transformed shape of being critical and censorious. Actually Mummy is frightfully fond of you, and in constant thought of you, and feels deeply for your present hard life …

It is hard to have your Varsity time suddenly ­broken … This is a desperately serious war. Last war, I often did not see my sweetheart (and later wife) for weeks and months. I only saw my brother about twice in three or four years. I was not even able to get to your mother for days when John was born and she was at death’s door – just about the time of the Battle of Cambrai. War is a grim hard ugly business. But it is as good a master as Oxford, or better.

To Christopher Tolkien, January 26 1941

Tolkien’s youngest son, now aged 16, had followed his brothers to the Oratory School.

My dearest Chris,

… Pity you forgot Mummy’s birthday (Tuesday last). Very few men, but practically all women set great store by dates and anniversaries. It does not ­follow that the men are wholly in the right about it! ­Anyway as a practical lesson in the way to live and conduct one’s social affairs smoothly, this ­difference between the sexes is well worth remembering. A man can avoid a lot of trouble for himself, and avoid giving much pain to others, by noting it – especially in the case of wives, mothers, sweethearts and ­sisters. Verb sap! [verbum sapienti: “a word to the wise”] No great harm done, this time. But I had no father to point this out, and have learnt the ­lesson I now pass on, only by troublesome experience. Bless you. Father.

To Christopher Tolkien, December 15 1943

My dearest,

… Ridley is a marvellous chairman of examiners. He provided a tot of whiskey, a lunch of stewed ­venison and apple-dumplings with a pint of beer and two glasses of port, which made “getting out the list” seem light work. That was Tuesday ­morning. Last night after 8pm I sallied forth into the ­bitterest night we have had for two years and visited ­Magdalen Coll[ege]. I hadn’t seen C S L[ewis] or Charles W[illiams]for a month. I found the two Lewises and Charles and Hugo sitting over port and desert [sic] and already very noisy, at any rate C S L (no less than Hugo): he had a cold coming on and had already partly drowned it. The effect is, as usual, to make him recite very loudly. A short but pleasant break in the Common Task. It broke up at 11 pm; and was resumed in the Mitre at 11.30 am this morning (Wednesday). I am afraid it rather curtailed the Christmas shopping that I had gone to town for.

To Christopher Tolkien, March 27 1944

My dearest boy,

Nothing much has happened here since I wrote last … I had a gruelling day that day! Up at 6.30. Mass at 7.30. Finished off “Sections”. Examiners’ ­meeting from 5 to nearly 11. Hardly arrived home before sirens went. Eventually arrived in bed after 2am. “Wedding-day” weather with a will. 90° in the Straits [of Dover] on Sunday. Glorious sun; trees leaping out – we are bowered in prunes and almond and ­forsythia etc. all coming out together; hens ­laying; fires out and still able to sit in comfort (as I now am) at 10pm with a thermometer at 60. A new moon like a piece of yellow orange cut up for marmalade. The ­comparison is suggested by the fact that we have had quite a lot of oranges lately, and have made many pounds of marmalade – and eaten it.

I did not get up early on Sat or Sunday (in spite of good intentions): too lagged … It seems beyond hope that I shd. do any Hobbit. I do not seem to have any mental energy or invention.

To Christopher Tolkien, July 7 1944

Poor old C S L went into the Acland [Nursing Home, in North Oxford] yesterday to have something done to his throat, and also to have a bit of shrapnel taken out. He seems to have carried it since 1917, but it has worked down at last between the bones of his forearm. He is all right, but I shall not be able to see him until Saturday … After prolonged search I ran a pint to earth, and so to throat, yesterday in company with Charles Williams, who handed over to me two chapters of the Ring, which he has had typed for me.

To Katharine Farrer, August 18 1954

Farrer was a writer of detective stories and wife of Austin Farrer, chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford.

I do think it is nice of you to show me the draft of your review. But as you are probably the most sensitive and perceptive of my “prime readers”, there is no need to feel any trepidation … In fact I was delighted that you stressed the “morality”. I think actually it is that which gives the story its “realness” and coherence – which my critics seem to feel – rather than any pictorial vividness. It was not “planned”, of course, but arose naturally in the attempt to treat the matter seriously; but it is now the foundation. For me the “kernel” is in Frodo’s last words to Sam: “I have been too deeply hurt. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in ­danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that ­others may keep them … all that I had or might have had, I leave to you.” 

I think of inserting at the end, as Sam stands ­forlorn, a faint cry over the water, echoing the end of Galadriel’s elvish song: namárië, nai hiruvalyë ­Valimar: farewell, maybe you too shall find Valimar. But would that spoil the bleak simplicity?

To Humphrey Cotton Minchin, April 1956 (draft)

Minchin, a military man and editor of The Legion Book (1929), had written to Tolkien in admiration.

I should be “retiring” in July 1957, and could then apply myself to the one branch of history and ­philology which I am especially devoted to. But alas! in lieu of a pension my University has merely ­elongated my professorial life. Also my philological colleagues and critics are now “turning on the heat”, as I believe they say in Mordor. They are kind enough not to refer (except behind my back) to my ­disgraceful action in becoming “literary”, and ­publishing a large unprofessional popular work; but they cry: “now we know what you have been doing all these years! Why the edition of this, and the ­commentary on that, and the grammars and ­glossaries, have all remained ‘promised’ but ­unfinished. You have had your fun and you must now do some work (!).” So stricken in conscience, and caught in several actually binding commitments, I find myself shorter of time than ever …

Anyway The Lord of the Rings has astonished me, and I believe the gallant publishers still more. It is actually, in spite of libraries, and the borrowing habit – perhaps more excusable when faced with a demand for three guineas – selling very well indeed. HM Treasury will naturally pocket most of the proceeds (unearned), since the fact that I have laboured and sacrificed other emoluments for 18 years unremunerated in the production of this work moves them not at all …

I had recently a letter from Sam Gamgee, of ­Tooting: a genuine person of that name. He seemed a little surprised. (Thank goodness it was not S ­Gollum; I live in fear of receiving a note from him; he won’t be quite so pleased.) Mr Sam Gamgee informs me that the name comes from Essex, but he doesn’t seem to know much more than that, except that ­several ­publicans in the London area have the name.

My “Sam Gamgee” is indeed, as you say, a ­reflexion of the English Soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far ­superior to myself.

To Michael Tolkien, November 6 1956

I am really alarmed at the hysteria in this country. It may well be a prelude to mob-rule! Half Oxford is in a kind of screaming frenzy – about Suez not Hungary! When the “clerks” go mad, what have we? The gods, they said, first drive mad those whom they wish to destroy. Armed “pacifism”, destroying the vehicles of innocent citizens, apparently in an agitation to remove a Prime Minister who has already received a constitutional vote (by 69) of confidence in a “democratically elected” Parliament. Dons yelling “fascist”, at high table, at colleagues who in mild voices venture to disagree with them. What a rot and stink is left by liberalism devoid of religion! I am afraid my alarm is not without an acutely selfish aspect. A Socialist government will pretty well reduce me to penury on retirement! Do you wonder that anyone who can gets out of this island? Though soon there will be nowhere to go to escape the rising tide of “orquerie”.

Still you never quite know what is going on even under the head of an apparent orc on a motor bike. I got a letter yesterday from a worker in Siemens ­factory at Woolwich thanking me for The Lord of the Rings, on his own behalf and three others who had read his copy! And it was the “elvish” parts that most interested him …

Don’t worry about M G’s English! I loathed it at school. And if there is anything more fatuously ­inappropriate for “age 14” than the rather tired sophisticated adult form the Essay (shades of 18th century prigs!) I don’t know it. Why don’t they teach the young some elementary metres and set them writing verse – doggerel if you like! And if the young like facts (as they should), why not teach them some of the facts of linguistic history in general and ­English in particular? Answer is, I suppose, because they don’t know ’em, and that is “philology” and wicked. Beware! All leftists are anti-philology!

Again love to you all. Up the Ents! Down with the Ruffians. And may the King return!

To Joan Anne Tolkien, November 1961

Joan Anne is Tolkien’s grand-daughter, Michael’s daughter, born in 1945.

Oxford continues to suffer from the ravages of the machine-worshippers. I remember it as a little old university town nestling in the country – and it had about 55,000 inhabitants. It now has nearly 100,000 more, sprawls in every direction, and is jammed with noise and smell; and every now & again the most ­hideous buildings go up. But it is not all bad change. The old town had a slum-fringe where very poor people lived in misery. There is little of that left now.

To Christopher Tolkien, February 8 1964 (not sent)

I do not think there are really any “evil winds”, though many are cold and bitter, and seem cruel … The hardest to take all the same, whatever measure we apply, are the winds that seem to come to punish us, or at least as a result of our own doings (or even mistakes). (Alas I know that only too well.) I am afraid all this sounds sententious – though only, I think, because we have become so shy of talking about such things, and the manner of our time prefers the “gay”, even the flippant, and the satirical (or ­disillusioned), if only as an armadillo covering…

This part of the letter was written on March 3 1968, after the first part had been discovered in a drawer.

Alas! sex and marriage are intractable problems, in which the profound disorder of the human “psyche” is most clearly seen. Of all the human gifts they have been in all recorded history the most horribly abused, and all thought and emotion that touches upon sex deranged and confused; so that its natural force is difficult to control – indeed for many overwhelmingly strong. Nearly all the known heresies and apostasies, and personal defections have been due to this force (or to an equally “insane” reaction against it). Humanity hovers perpetually between disgust and lust.

To Gene Wolfe, November 7 1966

Wolfe, who died in 2019 aged 87, was an American fantasy fiction author who had written to Tolkien.

Orc I derived from Anglo-Saxon, a word meaning a demon, usually supposed to be derived from the Latin Orcus – Hell. But I doubt this, though the ­matter is too involved to set out here. Warg is simple. It is an old word for wolf, which also had the sense of an outlaw or hunted criminal. This is its usual sense in surviving texts. I adopted the word which had a good sound for the meaning, as a name for this ­particular brand of demonic wolf in the story.

To a patient in Broadmoor Hospital, December 1971 (Draft)

I am so glad that you have read my book again, and have liked some of the poems; and also that you are feeling better. The “hobbits” of course were meant by me to be just ordinary kindly human people, fond of food, and fun, small in size but strong and brave and very good at driving away all nasty creatures and at helping other people that were troubled by such things. There were, of course, nasty and dangerous creatures in their time, but in my story these were conquered or destroyed by the hobbits and their friends, such as Tom Bombadil who was not ­frightened by any of them, and when he commanded them to go away, they fled at once.

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The Letters of J R R Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition, ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollins, £30), is out on November 9. Illustrations shown are by J R R Tolkien and taken from The Hobbit: Illustrated by the Author (HarperCollins, £45)