#also YEAH i got lotr silm and unfinished tales too 😏 same edition so they can look secksy on my shelf

[southfarthing]

I ordered a second-hand copy of Tree and Leaf a couple of weeks ago, and it arrived with a signature from Michael G. R. Tolkien (JRRT's grandson), dated 2 May 1989. I have to admit I don't know much about him, but it turns out that he delivered a lecture about his grandfather that day for the University of St. Andrews Science Fiction and Fantasy Society – so I'm guessing someone must have taken this book with them and asked him to sign it.

It's amazing to me that this book then ended up in my hands. Surely it was a thing of memory and fondness for its previous owner, and I can't imagine them willingly giving it away for it to sit in a warehouse somewhere before being sold online for cheap. And yet it has made the journey, and I'm even more excited to read it than before, now that this introduction to Tolkien's philosophy itself has been touched by history and memory.

An excerpt from the 1989 lecture that made me smile:

'I am delighted to be able to continue a family connection that goes back 50 years to the Andrew Long Memorial lecture of March 1939, though I am sorry to note in the official biography of my grandfather that this commitment was described as one of the "endless distractions that prevented him from working at The Lord of the Rings!" However, it is clear that this lecture was not just a sidetrack; it subsequently formed the basis for the remarkably astute and often characteristically witty, prejudiced and uncompromising Essay on Fairy Stories, known as "Tree and Leaf" [...] It helped to clarify his purposes and sense of direction in The Lord of the Rings and it could be seen as an indispensable guide to the art and concepts of Tolkien's fantasies. So what may have seemed a distraction was actually a reinvigoration and gave him more confidence as to what kind of audience the undertaking might presuppose.'

#🤧🥹 just. layers of history and memory... the unknowable nostalgia of pre-loved things... the allure of memories that aren't my own... #tolkien #jrr tolkien #mp #also YEAH i got lotr silm and unfinished tales too 😏 same edition so they can look secksy on my shelf #lotr