Letter 19

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Letter 19
Recipient	Stanley Unwin
Date	16 December 1937
Subject(s)	The Hobbit Quenta Silmarillion The Lord of the Rings

Letter 19 is a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Summary

This letter dated 16 December 1937 was sent to Stanley Unwin of Allen and Unwin regarding Tolkien's next project after The Hobbit. He had previously discussed The Father Christmas Letters with Unwin and passed him manuscript of the Quenta Silmarillion and The Gest of Beren and Lúthien. The latter two works had been returned with commentary from one of Allen & Unwin's readers, Edward Crankshaw – he praised certain aspects of the Silmarillion but criticized its "eye-splitting Celtic names", and dismissed the poem altogether. Despite this decidedly mixed review Tolkien is pleased the Silmarillion was not rejected out of hand, hoping now that he might one day publish his "private and beloved nonsense". He is less pleased with the "Celtic" comparison, defending his invented names as "coherent and consistent and made upon two related linguistic formulae, so that they achieve a reality not fully achieved to my feeling by other name-inventors". More generally Tolkien rejects the notion that his mythology is in any way 'Celtic':

I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have a bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact 'mad' as your reader says – but I don't believe I am.

However Tolkien recognises that the Silmarillion in its current form is not publishable and that "a sequel or successor to The Hobbit is called for". He promises to work on this, though explains that he is finding it difficult to conceive of more stories featuring hobbits because "the real fun about orcs and dragons ... was before their time". In answer to this problem he offers two ideas in which we can detect germs of The Lord of the Rings: a new but "similar" conflict to the First Age's orcs and dragons, where comical hobbits would be set against "things more elemental"; and an 'enlarged portrait' of Tom Bombadil, "spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside" (he encloses a copy of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.

At the end of the letter Tolkien asks several questions about illustrations for the reprint of The Hobbit, requests four copies to use as Christmas presents, gives Unwin his regards and suggests including a runic alphabet in the next edition – apologising for the "scrawling and rambling nature" of the letter in a postscript on the grounds of illness.