Letter to Mrs Munby
Mrs. Munby 21 October 1963 is a letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Mrs. Munby, written on October 21, 1963.
- Authenticity: Medium/Low
- Publication: None.
Excerpt
[The following comments and excerpts are supposedly from Henry Gee, author of The Science of Middle-earth:]
The letter came up for sale at an auction at Sotheby's in London on 11 and 12 July, 2002. It is dated 21 October 1963, and is addressed to a Mrs Munby in response to a number of questions posed by her son Stephen about The Lord of the Rings. The letter is long, but in one place reads as follows: 'There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known'. Tolkien also goes on to discuss the use of the word 'goblin': 'In The Hobbit 'goblin' is used... but goblin is a fairly modern word, and very vague in its application to any sort of bogey in the dark.'
