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

and Middle English texts * , Old and Middle English philology * , introductory Germanic philology * , Gothic, Old Icelandic (a second-year * and third-year course), and Medieval Welsh * . All these courses I have from time totime given myself; those that I have given personally in the past year are marked * . During this last session a course of voluntary reading of texts not specially considered in the current syllabus has attracted more than fifteen students, not all of them from the linguistic side of the department.
    Philology, indeed, appears to have lost for these students its connotations of terror if not of mystery. An active discussion-class has been conducted, on lines more familiar in schools of literature than of language, which has borne fruit in friendly rivalry and open debate with the corresponding literary assembly. A Viking Club has even been formed, by past and present students of Old Icelandic, which promises to carry on the same kind of activity independently of the staff. Old Icelandic has been a point of special development, and usually reaches a higher standard than the other special subjects, being studied for two years and in much the same detail as Anglo-Saxon. . . . .
    The large amount of teaching and direction which my post has hitherto involved, supplemented by a share in the general administration of a growing department, and latterly by the duties of a member of Senate at a time of special difficulty in University policy, has seriously interfered with my projects for publishable work; but I append a note of what I have found time to do. If elected to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Chair I should endeavour to make productive use of the opportunities which it offers for research; to advance, to the best of my ability, the growing neighbourliness of linguistic and literary studies, which can never be enemies except by misunderstanding or without loss to both; and to continue in a wider and more fertile field the encouragement of philological enthusiasm among the young.
    I remain,
    Gentlemen,
    Your obedient servant,
    J. R. R. Tolkien.
    Â 
8 From a letter to the Vice Chancellor of Leeds University
    22 July 1925
    My election to the Rawlinson & Bosworth professorship at Oxford has just been announced to me, & I have accepted – it takes effect from next October 1st – only with feelings of great regret at this sudden severance, in spite of this unexpected turn of fortune for myself.
    Only the sudden resignation of my predecessor has thrust this upon me so soon – I dimly coveted it as a thing perhaps for the more distant years, but now after this University’s kindness, and the great happinessof my brief period of work here, I feel ungrateful in asking to be released from my appointment so soon. I hope for your forgiveness.
9 To Susan Dagnall, George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
    [Tolkien wrote the greater part of
The Hobbit
during his first seven years as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. A text was in existence by the winter of 1932, when it was read by C. S. Lewis, though at this stage the typescript apparently lacked the final chapters, and broke off shortly before the death of the dragon Smaug. This typescript was eventually seen by Susan Dagnall, an Oxford graduate working for the London publishing house of Allen & Unwin, and she encouraged Tolkien to complete the story and offer it for publication. See nos. 163, 257, and 294 for Tolkien’s account of her involvement with the book, though two of these later letters are in error in suggesting that Susan Dagnall was still an Oxford student when she read the manuscript. See further
Biography
p. 180. It was on 3 October 1936 that Tolkien sent the completed typescript to Allen & Unwin. Stanley Unwin, founder and chairman of the firm, replied on 5 October that they would give their ‘immediate and careful consideration’ to the book. No further correspondence survives until the following letter. By the time that Tolkien wrote it, the