The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Read Free Page A

of time on it which is terrible to recall, and long delayed the Reader bringing curses on my head; but it was instructive.
    I need hardly say that I am quite convinced by your article and am delighted to feel confident that another rough patch in ‘Sir G.’ is now smoothed out finally by you.
    We have just passed through a somewhat disastrous Christmas, as the children chose that time to sicken for measles – by the beginning of January I was the only one in the house left up, the patients including the wife & nursemaid. The vacation work lay in ruins; but they (not the work) are all better now and not much the worse. I escaped. I hope you are well, and that Professor Wright is well – I have not heard any news of him lately, which I have interpreted favourably.
    Middle English is an exciting field – almost uncharted I begin to think, because as soon as one turns detailed personal attention on to any little corner of it the received notions and ideas seem to crumple up and fall to pieces – as far as language goes at any rate. E.D.D. is certainly indispensable, or ‘unentbehrlich’ as really comes more natural to the philological mind, and I encourage people to browze in it.
    My wife wishes to be remembered to you both and joins her greetings to mine.
    Yours sincerely
    J. R. R. Tolkien.
    Philology is making headway here. The proportion of ‘language’ students is very high, and there is no trace of the press-gang! JRRT.
7 To the Electors of the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford
    [In the summer of 1925 the Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford was advertised, following the resignation of W. A. Craigie. Tolkien decided to apply, though he was only thirty-three. This is his formal letter of application, dated 27 June 1925.]
    Gentlemen,
    I desire to offer myself as a candidate for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon.
    A Chair which affords such opportunity of expressing and communicating an instructed enthusiasm for Anglo-Saxon studies and for the study of the other Old Germanic languages is naturally attractive to me, nor could I desire anything better than to be reassociated in this way with the Oxford English School. I was a member of that School both as undergraduate and as tutor, and during my five years’ absence in Leeds am happy to have remained in touch with it, more especially, in the last two years, as an Examiner in the Final Schools.
    I entered Exeter College as Stapledon Exhibitioner in 1911. After taking Classical Moderations in 1913 (in which I specialized in Greek philology), I graduated with first class honours in English in 1915, my special subject being Old Icelandic. Until the end of 1918 I held a commission in the Lancashire Fusiliers, and at that date entered the service of the Oxford English Dictionary. I was one of Dr. Bradley’s 1 assistants until the spring of 1920, when my own work and the increasing labours of a tutor made it impossible to continue.
    In October 1920 I went to Leeds as Reader in English Language, with a free commission to develop the linguistic side of a large and growing School of English Studies, in which no regular provision had as yet been made for the linguistic specialist. I began with five hesitant pioneers out of a School (exclusive of the first year) of about sixty members. The proportion to-day is 43 literary to 20 linguistic students. The linguists are in no way isolated or cut off from the general life and work of the department, and share in many of the literary courses and activities of the School; but since 1922 their purely linguistic work has been conducted in special classes, and examined in distinct papers of special standard and attitude. The instruction offered has been gradually extended, and now covers a large part of the field of English and Germanic philology. Courses are given on Old English heroic verse, the history of English * , various Old English