1 00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:06,100 I'm Catherine McIlwaine, I'm the Tolkien archivist at the public library at the University of Oxford. 2 00:00:06,100 --> 00:00:12,570 OK, so could you tell me what actually entails being the token archivist? 3 00:00:12,570 --> 00:00:21,430 Well, I'm responsible for the creation of the Tolkien archive, which we hold of the Bodleian, which is the largest Tolkien archive in the world. 4 00:00:21,430 --> 00:00:30,630 We have about 500 boxes of tokens, manuscripts and over 300 volumes from this academic working library. 5 00:00:30,630 --> 00:00:35,550 So part of my job is to catalogue that material in archival terms. 6 00:00:35,550 --> 00:00:40,110 This means to look through every box of manuscripts, describe what's there, 7 00:00:40,110 --> 00:00:46,980 put it into an intellectual order that's going to make sense to the user and then to help the end 8 00:00:46,980 --> 00:00:53,880 user in the reading rooms and academic researchers can come to the party and to consult the archive. 9 00:00:53,880 --> 00:01:00,300 I also deal with researchers from further afield who can't make it into the library 10 00:01:00,300 --> 00:01:05,100 answering their queries because the archive is still quite a modern collection. 11 00:01:05,100 --> 00:01:14,400 It's still in copyright. So my job entails quite a lot of liaison with the Tolkien estate who and administrate the archive. 12 00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:27,750 And so requests for any publications or for images to go into publications and involves quite a liaison between me and the estate and the user. 13 00:01:27,750 --> 00:01:33,630 So it's quite a varied job. I also do outreach connected to the collection. 14 00:01:33,630 --> 00:01:42,540 Obviously, Tolkien is of great interest beyond the academic community and the public interest in his work as well. 15 00:01:42,540 --> 00:01:47,670 So we've done displays, major exhibitions, books. 16 00:01:47,670 --> 00:01:55,530 I do sometimes school groups and sometimes virtual sessions with students from overseas. 17 00:01:55,530 --> 00:02:04,590 And well, during the pandemic I have sometimes they can come into the library and we'll do acquisitions of virtual sessions. 18 00:02:04,590 --> 00:02:11,130 And so, yeah, it's nice to have some outreach as well beyond the academic researchers. 19 00:02:11,130 --> 00:02:18,510 And and yeah, that gives us is quite a rounded job in terms of 20 00:02:18,510 --> 00:02:28,200 an archivist. We've touched on it and the events of 20-21 with the pandemic, 21 00:02:28,200 --> 00:02:36,810 and has that really impacted on your ability to do your job because you've had to almost physically separate it from the archive? 22 00:02:36,810 --> 00:02:46,620 It's been interesting, actually. We've all learnt to use technologies that had been around but that we hadn't really grappled with before. 23 00:02:46,620 --> 00:02:55,920 So zoom meetings and and team sessions and some of it has been really fantastic statement that I could reach out to groups overseas, 24 00:02:55,920 --> 00:02:59,550 much bigger groups than could travel to Oxford. 25 00:02:59,550 --> 00:03:06,960 And so you feel like you're reaching out not to just people who can afford to get on a plane from America and come to Oxford for two weeks. 26 00:03:06,960 --> 00:03:20,880 But anyone who can just show up in their university room and I also did a book club recently for children aged eight to 14. 27 00:03:20,880 --> 00:03:26,460 And that was a session that we conducted across the UK and everybody could kind of 28 00:03:26,460 --> 00:03:31,260 dial in via Zoom and they could see me chatting and they could ask me questions. 29 00:03:31,260 --> 00:03:37,680 And that was really lovely to get that sort of interactive. And I don't think I would ever have done something like that before the pandemic. 30 00:03:37,680 --> 00:03:47,460 But we've all got so used to different ways of working that there's really some positive things about it and it hasn't greatly affected my work. 31 00:03:47,460 --> 00:03:55,710 And although some of my work is hands on, I need to consult the archive and I need to do some of my cataloguing work. 32 00:03:55,710 --> 00:04:01,830 A lot of what I do is set at my desk and just sat at the computer answering enquiries. 33 00:04:01,830 --> 00:04:07,080 It's dealing with copyright issues. It's liaising with the estate. 34 00:04:07,080 --> 00:04:10,890 So during the pandemic, really, when I've been able to access the library, 35 00:04:10,890 --> 00:04:17,970 I've stored up and test, I need to do where I actually need to consult the archive. 36 00:04:17,970 --> 00:04:24,510 And I've probably done a bit more work for researchers who are unable to get the book in than I would usually. 37 00:04:24,510 --> 00:04:28,500 Usually I would just facilitate the research and tell them what they can find, 38 00:04:28,500 --> 00:04:34,470 which box it would be in, and because research so been able to travel to the UK, 39 00:04:34,470 --> 00:04:37,800 I've done more of going down to look at that material, 40 00:04:37,800 --> 00:04:44,970 getting out of the stacks and sending them information or sending them scans with the approval of the Tolkien estate. 41 00:04:44,970 --> 00:04:49,960 So a little bit different, but it hasn't greatly affected my day to day work. 42 00:04:49,960 --> 00:04:57,950 OK, thank you. I'm just wondering if it's OK just in the now and the here and now because it is such an extraordinary time. 43 00:04:57,950 --> 00:05:02,250 And have you noticed an increase in interest in Tolkien? 44 00:05:02,250 --> 00:05:06,570 Because one of the things people are saying is, you know, people have returned to books a lot more. 45 00:05:06,570 --> 00:05:09,990 They've and they've also returned to books which, well, 46 00:05:09,990 --> 00:05:15,840 in Tolkien's world allows you to escape the prison cell and imagine a better world around. 47 00:05:15,840 --> 00:05:21,840 Have you seen a bigger increase in interest? Not in terms of the enquiries coming to me, 48 00:05:21,840 --> 00:05:29,760 which a lot of the enquiries are from academics and the exhibition that we held at the Bodleian 2018 and then 49 00:05:29,760 --> 00:05:37,900 Follow-On exhibitions in New York and Paris hugely increased interest in our collection and raised its profile. 50 00:05:37,900 --> 00:05:47,370 But in terms of the pandemic, it was interesting because the schoolchildren who did the book club event with one of the questions from a girl in that 51 00:05:47,370 --> 00:05:55,350 group was and did I think that Tolkien's work - particularly looking at The Hobbit rather than the Lord of the Rings, 52 00:05:55,350 --> 00:06:03,210 which is more appropriate for their age group - did I think that it had a particular message for us during the pandemic. 53 00:06:03,210 --> 00:06:10,320 And so, yeah, that was interesting that people, even children, were reading it with a different slant. 54 00:06:10,320 --> 00:06:16,860 Now looking at it and from a period of of danger and fear for everyone that we've all lived through. 55 00:06:16,860 --> 00:06:25,620 And I think even though children weren't getting sick and dying as adults were, they were still affected by the fear. 56 00:06:25,620 --> 00:06:30,930 And how did you reply or did she also have a view? Yeah, I think it was really interesting. 57 00:06:30,930 --> 00:06:40,920 I hadn't really thought of it myself. But of course, The Hobbit and the main character and Bilbo Baggins is not really heroic character, is he? 58 00:06:40,920 --> 00:06:47,820 But he grows during this journey. He goes through fearful episodes and he has to overcome that. 59 00:06:47,820 --> 00:06:57,990 And and it all comes right. In the end, he finds inner strength that he never knew he had and he finds his own moral compass and he comes back safe, 60 00:06:57,990 --> 00:07:02,670 which I think is important for the age group reading that book. 61 00:07:02,670 --> 00:07:09,810 So, yeah, I thought it was it did have a message during this, this period that, um. 62 00:07:09,810 --> 00:07:10,080 Yeah. 63 00:07:10,080 --> 00:07:20,860 That we can all look into our own personal resources, you know, look within ourselves and we can find that we have more strengths than we realised. 64 00:07:20,860 --> 00:07:27,220 And that, you know, through very difficult times, we could come out on the other side into better times. 65 00:07:27,220 --> 00:07:33,790 Yeah, well, let's hope so. Thank you. Yeah. And so returning to the collection itself from the archives, 66 00:07:33,790 --> 00:07:38,290 could you say a bit about the history of how it actually came to Bodley and also 67 00:07:38,290 --> 00:07:43,190 the relationship between the collection and the collection at Marquette? Yes. 68 00:07:43,190 --> 00:07:50,560 So the collection that we have at the Bodleian came after Tolkien died. 69 00:07:50,560 --> 00:08:01,600 So Tolkien died in 1973 at that point and some he'd already sold part of his archive to. 70 00:08:01,600 --> 00:08:07,720 So maybe should I deal with the market first in sort of chronological order that that came first. 71 00:08:07,720 --> 00:08:17,040 And so Tolkien published The Lord of the Rings, you know, three volumes, 1954 and 1955. 72 00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:23,890 And he was he was quite near retirement, actually, when the book was published. 73 00:08:23,890 --> 00:08:29,240 It had taken an awful long time to write. And then he had taken him another five years to get published. 74 00:08:29,240 --> 00:08:34,570 And so he was quite an elderly professor who was in his 60s by that time. 75 00:08:34,570 --> 00:08:42,680 And Marquette University in the state of Wisconsin, in America, in Milwaukee. 76 00:08:42,680 --> 00:08:55,360 In fact, they have appointed a new director of the library service called William Reedy, and they were building a new memorial library. 77 00:08:55,360 --> 00:09:01,210 And at that time and they wanted to fill it with collections and so really was employed. 78 00:09:01,210 --> 00:09:05,860 I think he had come from Stanford University, where he was an acquisitions librarian, 79 00:09:05,860 --> 00:09:13,030 and he was employed by Marquette University to acquire new collections. 80 00:09:13,030 --> 00:09:19,300 This is in 1956. So he sought a number of different collections. 81 00:09:19,300 --> 00:09:25,360 He did not seem to have a theme to me. There was lots to eat and sort didn't get. 82 00:09:25,360 --> 00:09:35,110 He did get the papers of the US politician McCarthy, and he got the papers of a Catholic activist, 83 00:09:35,110 --> 00:09:40,870 Dorothy Day, and for some reason known only, I suspect, William Ready. 84 00:09:40,870 --> 00:09:44,590 He went after the papers of JRR Tolkien. 85 00:09:44,590 --> 00:09:53,500 And the dates are quite important here because it's only a year after the publication of The Return of the King, the final volume. 86 00:09:53,500 --> 00:09:57,340 And so it really is very quick off the blocks, if you like. 87 00:09:57,340 --> 00:10:06,340 And he gets in touch with Tolkien via a London book dealer called Bertram Rota and offers to purchase his manuscripts. 88 00:10:06,340 --> 00:10:17,050 I think even in America, this is quite, quite a new era over there where they're starting to purchase archives of living individuals, 89 00:10:17,050 --> 00:10:24,400 not just authors, but writers and academics. And Tolkien's age, again, as I mentioned, 90 00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:32,320 is important because when he's approached by Bertram Rota at the end of 1956, he's coming towards retirement. 91 00:10:32,320 --> 00:10:33,700 He doesn't have a lot of money. 92 00:10:33,700 --> 00:10:41,510 There's been quite a lot of discussion in the talking community about this, but he absolutely didn't have a lot of money at that time. 93 00:10:41,510 --> 00:10:48,670 And he'd only received one royalty payment from the Lord of the Rings. 94 00:10:48,670 --> 00:10:59,740 So in 1954, he didn't receive it in 1955, didn't receive any payments because he was on a profit sharing deal with the publisher. 95 00:10:59,740 --> 00:11:06,490 It was a huge undertaking to publish his book and thousand pages long and three volumes. 96 00:11:06,490 --> 00:11:13,570 It was an adult fantasy novel in an era when this wasn't really even a genre fantasy wasn't a genre, 97 00:11:13,570 --> 00:11:18,970 and they didn't know who was going to sell to who was going to buy this massive fairy story for adults. 98 00:11:18,970 --> 00:11:27,040 And but they knew The Hobbit sold. Well, that was that the first publication. 99 00:11:27,040 --> 00:11:33,160 And when the publisher really liked the Lord of the Rings and they thought they'll go for it, they thought they were going to lose money on it. 100 00:11:33,160 --> 00:11:39,250 Definitely. And the head of the firm, Stanley Unwin, said you can lose a thousand pounds on it. 101 00:11:39,250 --> 00:11:46,120 If you think it's a work of genius, you can thousand pounds. So they're prepared to publish it even at a loss. 102 00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:53,770 And so to cut down the risks and what they said to Tolkien, you won't get any royalties. 103 00:11:53,770 --> 00:12:00,040 That would be sort of seven to 11 percent would be an average royalty for an author. 104 00:12:00,040 --> 00:12:08,060 This you won't get any royalties that will put you on a profit sharing 50/50 deal once production costs have been paid off. 105 00:12:08,060 --> 00:12:13,420 If it makes any money after that point, then you get half that. 106 00:12:13,420 --> 00:12:20,400 Well, knowing what we know now and the sales of Lord of the Rings, phenomenal. 107 00:12:20,400 --> 00:12:25,710 They would never have offered him that deal if they thought he was going to sell anything like it does. 108 00:12:25,710 --> 00:12:35,070 So this was to reduce their risk. And this is why Tolkien didn't receive any money until May 1956 when he received a royalty check. 109 00:12:35,070 --> 00:12:39,980 Quite a hefty one. And he's surprised by that. 110 00:12:39,980 --> 00:12:46,160 He is so surprised that he was selling. And so shortly after that, at the towards the end of that year, 111 00:12:46,160 --> 00:12:51,710 actually he was approached by Marquette University through Bertram Rota and 112 00:12:51,710 --> 00:12:59,150 offered 1500 pounds for his manuscripts of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. 113 00:12:59,150 --> 00:13:04,310 And this sounds derisory now. It really wasn't. 114 00:13:04,310 --> 00:13:09,050 It was equivalent to his annual salary as a professor at Oxford at the time. 115 00:13:09,050 --> 00:13:17,150 He was the professor of professor of English language and literature, about £80,000 or something like that. 116 00:13:17,150 --> 00:13:23,370 Right. Yeah. So, um, and Tolkien didn't jump at this. 117 00:13:23,370 --> 00:13:28,160 He took advice. He asked his publishers for their advice. 118 00:13:28,160 --> 00:13:33,380 I don't think they had any idea of what manuscripts were worth. 119 00:13:33,380 --> 00:13:38,510 And they hadn't been involved in this before. But they they thought if you checked out the tax situation, 120 00:13:38,510 --> 00:13:44,900 was he going to be taxed on that lump sum and as capital gains or was it going to be taxed as ink? 121 00:13:44,900 --> 00:13:54,530 And so he obviously took advice from his financial adviser as well, and he decided to go for it. 122 00:13:54,530 --> 00:13:59,570 As I say, at that time, they would he had one payment from the books, 123 00:13:59,570 --> 00:14:05,540 but no one had written to him and said, we think this is really the peak in sales. 124 00:14:05,540 --> 00:14:12,060 We don't think you can do anything like this again. And so they weren't expecting to make any more money from it. 125 00:14:12,060 --> 00:14:22,640 And he thought, why not, you know, take this lump sum now, he'd actually just agreed to do two additional years as professor at Oxford. 126 00:14:22,640 --> 00:14:29,900 He should have retired in 57 and he'd agreed to go on until 1959. 127 00:14:29,900 --> 00:14:36,950 And so after he agreed the deal with and Bertram Rota to sell not only The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, 128 00:14:36,950 --> 00:14:44,750 but also to throw in and Farmer Giles of Ham and Mr. Bliss, which was an unpublished children's picture book. 129 00:14:44,750 --> 00:14:55,670 And he got another royalty payment on a royalty payment and he got another and Profit-Sharing payment from the publisher in 57. 130 00:14:55,670 --> 00:15:00,080 And they said, we think this is definitely it, you know, you can't get anymore. 131 00:15:00,080 --> 00:15:07,970 And but in fact, he continued to get a large payment and every year that followed throughout his life. 132 00:15:07,970 --> 00:15:13,460 And so everybody was wrong about that. But this is why he sold the manuscripts, 133 00:15:13,460 --> 00:15:24,130 because then they came to him and they offered him money at a time when he certainly needed money and when he was worried about. 134 00:15:24,130 --> 00:15:29,110 A retirement without any income. Not a very small pension. 135 00:15:29,110 --> 00:15:34,840 I heard people say that they would deliberately targeting Catholic writers, but that was the theme, right? 136 00:15:34,840 --> 00:15:37,780 OK, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. 137 00:15:37,780 --> 00:15:45,220 And and I don't know whether it was put to him that to talk in that it was a Catholic university, it was founded by Jesuits. 138 00:15:45,220 --> 00:15:54,050 It's a private Catholic university. And that might have had an impact on him as well as his Catholic faith was hugely important to him. 139 00:15:54,050 --> 00:16:00,100 Yeah. So to be clear, Bodley never asked for the manuscripts or offered him anything. 140 00:16:00,100 --> 00:16:08,350 No. I mean, at that time, I don't think anybody in the UK would have thought of trying to buy Tolkien's papers. 141 00:16:08,350 --> 00:16:17,560 And the only book before that as sort of a fiction book was The Hobbit in 1937, which it continued to sell well. 142 00:16:17,560 --> 00:16:23,740 And then this huge gap until 1954, 55, and the Lord of the Rings came out. 143 00:16:23,740 --> 00:16:26,770 And although, you know, it was it was successful from the start, 144 00:16:26,770 --> 00:16:32,830 it was all it was kind of a slow burner in the U.K. and really took off 10 years or so later 145 00:16:32,830 --> 00:16:43,180 with the U.S. market and increasing sales and increasing publicity for Tolkien Tolkien's name. 146 00:16:43,180 --> 00:16:52,180 So even at the time of his death in 73, I don't think it would have been anybody crowding round asking whether any of the papers. 147 00:16:52,180 --> 00:16:54,980 Were coming back to Oxford and the Bodley. 148 00:16:54,980 --> 00:17:07,180 And it was several years after Tolkien died and the Bodleian was looking to increase its literary holdings of authors with an Oxford connexction. 149 00:17:07,180 --> 00:17:18,640 So it was specifically wanting to boost that area of our collections and the head of the keeper of the manuscripts, 150 00:17:18,640 --> 00:17:27,620 as it was called then, was David Vaizey, who went on to become Bodley's librarian and. 151 00:17:27,620 --> 00:17:30,980 I don't know if it was David Vaizey's suggestion, 152 00:17:30,980 --> 00:17:45,230 but certainly he approached Christopher Tolkien and asked if he would ever consider giving these father's papers to the body. 153 00:17:45,230 --> 00:17:54,530 And there's quite a lovely phrase in the letter, the original letter from David Vaizey, Christopher Tollien, I'll have to paraphrase it now, 154 00:17:54,530 --> 00:17:56,360 but it's something along the lines of, you know, 155 00:17:56,360 --> 00:18:09,580 as a as a fellow of Exeter College and a reader and and an academic who needs no persuading of the genius of Tolkien. 156 00:18:09,580 --> 00:18:14,450 And we really hope, you know, that this collection could come to the Bodleian. 157 00:18:14,450 --> 00:18:25,220 So Christopher was very happy to get that letter, very pleased by the idea and consulted with his siblings, 158 00:18:25,220 --> 00:18:32,640 who obviously have a stake in it as well, and everybody was agreed that they would like the collection to come to it. 159 00:18:32,640 --> 00:18:33,560 And obviously, 160 00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:43,010 it's a natural home for it because it's Oxford University is where Tolkien came as a student and where he spent most of his academic career, 161 00:18:43,010 --> 00:18:51,200 apart from his five year stint at the University of Leeds, is where he wrote his books. 162 00:18:51,200 --> 00:19:00,110 And so there's a huge connexion in Tolkien's life to the university and to the library. 163 00:19:00,110 --> 00:19:07,580 And I think that the family also felt that not only would the collection be safeguarded at the Bodleian, 164 00:19:07,580 --> 00:19:13,900 but it would also that also be an academic focus on the research. 165 00:19:13,900 --> 00:19:24,160 We wouldn't, in a way, sort of over use the collection or use it in an inappropriate way. 166 00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:35,050 So at that time, Christopher Tolkien was working on the Silmarillion and still had a need to use the manuscript material. 167 00:19:35,050 --> 00:19:40,580 So it was a little while before it was finalised and came to about it. 168 00:19:40,580 --> 00:19:46,920 And so we got our first tranche of material in 1979. 169 00:19:46,920 --> 00:19:53,850 And then there's been quite a number of donations and deposits of further material over the years. 170 00:19:53,850 --> 00:20:01,800 And yeah, right almost up to the present day really, and we take him material from the family. 171 00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:08,580 And very occasionally we look to purchase material and of course, 172 00:20:08,580 --> 00:20:21,300 Tolkien and manuscripts or any items associated with talking about enormously high monetary value now, which makes it quite difficult to purchase items. 173 00:20:21,300 --> 00:20:27,390 And we wouldn't for example, I think we wouldn't go for an individual letter and a letter from Tolkien, 174 00:20:27,390 --> 00:20:34,290 depending on the subject matter, would go between five and ten thousand pounds for an individual letter. 175 00:20:34,290 --> 00:20:38,820 And so bear in mind, the whole of our collection, we wouldn't go through something like that, 176 00:20:38,820 --> 00:20:43,570 Recently it was the Pauline Baynes map with annotations by Tolkien. 177 00:20:43,570 --> 00:20:51,390 But yeah, so we don't have a huge acquisitions fund as a lot of American universities do. 178 00:20:51,390 --> 00:21:00,280 And so in order to purchase the it was a printed map of Middle-earth that was taken from the back of 179 00:21:00,280 --> 00:21:11,660 The return of the king. What was taken out of the Lord of the Rings, cut out from Pauline Bayne's copy and then her and Tolkien annotated it, 180 00:21:11,660 --> 00:21:18,830 and this was to help her visualise her illustration for the post a map of Middle-earth. 181 00:21:18,830 --> 00:21:24,590 And so, yeah, it's fascinating to see what Tolkien's written on it about the flora and fauna, 182 00:21:24,590 --> 00:21:30,080 what the ships would look like in the sales and and different place names that he's written on that map. 183 00:21:30,080 --> 00:21:38,060 So it just shows there's so much more in his mind that they can put down into the published work at that stage. 184 00:21:38,060 --> 00:21:40,070 So that was a really lovely item. 185 00:21:40,070 --> 00:21:48,030 As soon as I saw that, I took with me as well Judith Priestman, who's curator of literary manuscripts at the time, the Bodleian. 186 00:21:48,030 --> 00:21:52,280 And we went to look at it and we thought, oh gosh, I would love to have this item. 187 00:21:52,280 --> 00:21:56,240 This is very special and to have in the collection, 188 00:21:56,240 --> 00:22:06,230 but that entailed grant applications and asking friends of the Bodleian and to support it and financial way. 189 00:22:06,230 --> 00:22:11,510 And so there's quite a lot of effort involved and quite a lot of time went into that. 190 00:22:11,510 --> 00:22:20,530 So it's about six months before we acquired that map. If we were to describe the archive now under the major headings that we have, 191 00:22:20,530 --> 00:22:25,690 you mentioned the Silmarillion manuscripts, academic papers, is that right? 192 00:22:25,690 --> 00:22:29,380 And what will be the main categories that it falls under? 193 00:22:29,380 --> 00:22:42,010 Yeah, I have it into academic papers and academic books, literary papers and personal papers and artwork. 194 00:22:42,010 --> 00:22:48,640 And they art work is such a large section that I just get it into a separate section. 195 00:22:48,640 --> 00:23:00,100 And so the academic papers are mostly available to researchers and these range from Tolkien's and notes that he took as a student at Oxford. 196 00:23:00,100 --> 00:23:07,180 And when he changed the English course way through his degree, I don't know what he did with these classics notebooks. 197 00:23:07,180 --> 00:23:15,220 I think he slung them because we only have it from when he started the English degree in 1913. 198 00:23:15,220 --> 00:23:28,070 So they go, yeah, from his own and student notes to the academic lecture notes and research that he did for his own lectures. 199 00:23:28,070 --> 00:23:37,400 Well, from Leeds onwards, from 1920 onwards, and quite a large section of his working library is. 200 00:23:37,400 --> 00:23:49,010 His books of old middle English edition, some dictionaries and Philological works, and they're interesting for his annotations in those books. 201 00:23:49,010 --> 00:23:56,990 So that's his academic work and that's available to researchers and the literary papers, obviously, of great interest. 202 00:23:56,990 --> 00:24:02,900 And a small amount of those are available for researchers to consult. 203 00:24:02,900 --> 00:24:07,400 That is the non-Middle-earth material, I would say. 204 00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:13,880 So that's Leaf by Niggle and Smith of Wootton Major? 205 00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:22,820 You can look at the draught manuscripts of that and see you was going with that before it came to publication. draft206 00:24:22,820 --> 00:24:36,020 And this is important essays and lectures that he gave, like 'on fairy-stories' and Sir Gawaian and the monsters and the critics , 207 00:24:36,020 --> 00:24:41,170 which are really his academic papers, but cross over section as well. 208 00:24:41,170 --> 00:24:53,090fairy stories. 209 00:24:53,090 --> 00:25:00,350 Which gives Tolkien's views on fairy stories were telling when he was at the beginning of writing The Lord of the Rings and 210 00:25:00,350 --> 00:25:07,080 trying to assess in his own mind what their stories were and whether they were appropriate material for adults to read. 211 00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:09,950 It's really interesting. 212 00:25:09,950 --> 00:25:19,550 So the Middle-earth material, which is really from the earliest writings in the Silmarillion and when Tolkien is a student at Oxford, 213 00:25:19,550 --> 00:25:24,920 right through to his later writings on. 214 00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:31,590 Reincarnation of elves and. Some linguistic work in that he wrote towards the end of his life. 215 00:25:31,590 --> 00:25:38,120 All that material and is at the Bodleian but isn't available yet to researchers. 216 00:25:38,120 --> 00:25:43,800 Some of that going to be in Carl Hostetter's new book. Yes, that's true. 217 00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:50,920 Yes. I was just looking yesterday to see if that was. Published, and I think it's due out soon. 218 00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:57,220 Yeah, so publication date of September, but I thought it was June, but yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that. 219 00:25:57,220 --> 00:26:08,680 Yes, so Carl had permission to publish some of that material in the nature of Middle Earth, which is quite exciting. 220 00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:16,030 So that's literary papers. And all the personal papers that we hold are still closed to researchers. 221 00:26:16,030 --> 00:26:24,430 And just because of the personal nature of them and because, you know, close members of Tolkien's family are still alive. 222 00:26:24,430 --> 00:26:31,490 So at some point in the future and hopefully that material be de- restricted, 223 00:26:31,490 --> 00:26:44,260 the artwork is not available in a way because it's so fragile and that we don't produce it in the reading room. 224 00:26:44,260 --> 00:26:50,230 And I often get asked, well, you know, people sat there looking at mediaeval manuscripts, you know, and illuminated manuscripts. 225 00:26:50,230 --> 00:26:52,320 Why can't I look at Tolkien's drawings? 226 00:26:52,320 --> 00:27:02,590 And the reason is that, you know, mediaeval manuscripts are on really durable material with parchment and thick paper and Tolkien throughout his life, 227 00:27:02,590 --> 00:27:09,610 Just used anything that came to hand. He didn't even go to the art shop and buy, you know, good quality paper and then start on the, 228 00:27:09,610 --> 00:27:19,420 you know, the Hobbit dust jacket, which was going to be published. He just didn't he just picked up some notes and student examin script or, 229 00:27:19,420 --> 00:27:26,080 you know, the drawing of Xanadu and which is on the back of his Taylor's receipt 230 00:27:26,080 --> 00:27:30,790 Yeah. So he continually uses recycled material. 231 00:27:30,790 --> 00:27:40,570 And the material that in itself is is not going to last unless it's preserved in optimum conditions. 232 00:27:40,570 --> 00:27:48,370 And the more that it's handled and exposed to light and handled by people, the worse it becomes. 233 00:27:48,370 --> 00:27:59,260 And also some of the artwork is fragile. So if you've got, like soft jokes and soft pencil on the surface every time that's moved around or handled, 234 00:27:59,260 --> 00:28:10,570 that can actually be taken off the surface. So we're very careful with the artwork and only surrogates are made available. 235 00:28:10,570 --> 00:28:19,960 And fortunately, that's less of a problem now because a lot of the artwork has been published in quality and reproduction. 236 00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:25,570 And that was one of the things that's so nice about the exhibition here and elsewhere, 237 00:28:25,570 --> 00:28:33,610 is that we were able to showcase so much of that material, which is usually just kept hidden in the dark, underground in the strongroom. 238 00:28:33,610 --> 00:28:38,230 And so it was really lovely to be able to share that material. 239 00:28:38,230 --> 00:28:42,850 But with art work and I remember you helped me when I was doing my analysis 240 00:28:42,850 --> 00:28:49,750 of Shelob's Lair chapter and I'd got some facsimile manuscripts from Marquette, 241 00:28:49,750 --> 00:28:55,600 which is the text. But then because he'd drawn the illustration of Cirith Ungol that was in Bodley. 242 00:28:55,600 --> 00:29:02,800 So was that common that there was a split? Every time he dida drawing something like that, it'd end up here. 243 00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:08,520 I think that's that's an unusual piece in our collection. 244 00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:09,880 And for us, 245 00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:19,090 it's highly prized because it has this two pages of manuscript writing from the Lord of the Rings and the rest of it is at Marquette University. 246 00:29:19,090 --> 00:29:25,270 And so that is unusual. I think probably what it comes down to is in the correspondence with Bertram 247 00:29:25,270 --> 00:29:31,810 Rota when he's negotiating the sale Tolkien and like most authors or academics, 248 00:29:31,810 --> 00:29:39,520 wants to sort out the papers before and they go to market, which is always hugely busy and he's always delayed. 249 00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:48,490 And he can see this throughout his correspondence. And he's always apologising for being late with things weeks, months, years later in some cases. 250 00:29:48,490 --> 00:29:51,510 And so this doesn't get done. 251 00:29:51,510 --> 00:30:00,700 And they take, I think, The Hobbit and Farmer Giles and Mr Bliss in 1957, and he's still hanging on to the Lord the Rings. 252 00:30:00,700 --> 00:30:07,660 He still wants to sort it out and they come back to him and eventually he has to just let it go without ever sorting through it. 253 00:30:07,660 --> 00:30:13,610 And that material, one year later, 1958, still not having been sorted. 254 00:30:13,610 --> 00:30:17,230 And so I think, yes, he did remove that. Shelob's Lair 255 00:30:17,230 --> 00:30:25,750 He must have removed it because of the artwork on it and then never realised when the manuscript was sold. 256 00:30:25,750 --> 00:30:35,710 I know that many years later, Christopher Tolkien and discovered a number of boxes of material that were revisions and draughts of Lord of the Rings, 257 00:30:35,710 --> 00:30:41,380 and he felt that they should have been included in the sale to market. And so he donated them at that point. 258 00:30:41,380 --> 00:30:47,210 And I can keep in their collection of Lord of the Rings complete which is nice. 259 00:30:47,210 --> 00:30:55,012 Again, I'm sorry to say we just have that one. Great for us but not so great for Marquette.