Letter to Ronald Ashton
On 12 March 1927, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a letter to Ronald Ashton (a former student at the University of Leeds).[1]
- Subject: Tolkien offers to write a testimonial. Comments on Oxford, "a centre of the motor industry: that fantastic lunacy", and on the Universities at Leeds and Oxford.
- Publication: Quotes appear in Michael Silverman, Catalogue Twenty-Seven.
Transcription
[First page (in part):]
Neither of us were ever under the delusion that Oxford = Paradise: we know it too well. There are still lingering vestiges of civilisation in Oxford of course, a civilization [sic] that for historical reasons did not reach the North before it was overwhelmed by the new barbarism - but it is still part of modern England (and a centre of the motor industry: that fantastic lunacy).
[Second page:]
As for myself I find much that makes me regret Leeds very much. I doubt very much whether I should ever have torn myself away if I had been a single man, and able to disregard small differences in salary. The English School here is a battle-ground and there is small peace and little sense in it.
I hope when you have dreed your unhappy weird in the Ed. Dept. — glorious product of half-baked pseudo-science — that you will get a job of a tolerable sort. Your qualifications are good enough anyhow. I hope you are [?well] and [?flourishing]. Please remember me kindly ??? ??? Mr. Ashton.
[?Sincerely]
JRR Tolkien
See also
References
- ↑ Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, "Addenda and Corrigenda to The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (2006) Vol. 1: Chronology" at HammondandScull.com (accessed 20 May 2012)
