The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull
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September 1937 Christopher Tolkien begins to attend the Oratory School at Caversham, joining his brother Michael. Tolkien drives the boys to the school and sees some of the new ‘flats’. – C.A. Furth informs Tolkien that Houghton Mifflin will pay him $100 for his illustrations to The Hobbit.
30 September 1937 Susan Dagnall asks Tolkien if he can recommend someone to write a book, to be called The Loom of Language, based on a synopsis she encloses.
1 October 1937 Tolkien writes to Susan Dagnall, asking for more information about The Loom of Language. – Jane Neave writes to Tolkien. She has heard about The Hobbit from Hilary, but has not yet received a copy. She asks for more information, and suggests that she might get a copy from the Times Book Club.
2 October 1937 Susan Dagnall writes to Tolkien. The idea for The Loom of Language originated apparently at a weekend party by a group including one of Allen & Unwin’s authors, and the synopsis was passed to them for possible development. See note. – C.S. Lewis anonymously reviews The Hobbit in the Times Literary Supplement. He points out that both The Hobbit and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ‘belong to a very small class of books which have nothing in common save that each admits us to a world of its own – a world that seems to have been going on before we stumbled into it but which, once found by the right reader, becomes indispensable to him’ (p. 714).
3 October 1937 Tolkien writes to his son Michael at school. He thanks Michael for keeping an eye on Christopher, and commiserates with him on not yet being in the school rugby football team. ‘Mummy seems to have taken to car-riding … and I have now got to take her’, Priscilla, and a family friend out this afternoon (Letters, p. 23).
5 October 1937 Tolkien writes to Susan Dagnall. He thinks the scheme of The Loom of Language bad, in fact he had wondered if it was a leg-pull.
6 October 1937 After receiving Jane Neave’s letter of 1 October Tolkien realizes that even though Hilary has sent him her address, he has not yet sent her the copy he signed and the letter he wrote on 22 September. Apparently he is unable to find these, and therefore signs and dates another copy on 6 October, and writes another letter in which he asks about the Times Book Club. When he finds the original copy he keeps it in his own collection with the earlier letter.
7 October 1937 Mary St John, OSB, of Oulton Abbey, the sister of Christopher Wiseman, writes to ask Tolkien if he would send her a copy of The Hobbit. Since she has taken a vow of poverty she offers to pay with prayers for him and his family.
8 October 1937 C.S. Lewis anonymously reviews The Hobbit for the London Times. He compares it to The Wind in the Willows and remarks that ‘in this book a number of good things, never before united, have come together: a fund of humour, an understanding of children, and a happy fusion of the scholar’s with the poet’s grasp of mythology’ (p. 20).
9 October 1937 Jane Neave writes to Tolkien enthusiastically about The Hobbit, the signed copy of which she has now received. She cannot find the reply from the Times Book Club.
10 October 1937 Michaelmas Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures and classes for this term are: Beowulf: Text on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 12 October; Finn and Hengest on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 12 October; Old English Texts (Class) on Tuesdays at 5.15 p.m. at Pembroke College, beginning 12 October.
11 October 1937 Stanley Unwin writes to Tolkien. His son Rayner is rereading The Hobbit now that it is in print. He sends Tolkien an appreciative letter from Richard Hughes, and warns him ‘that The Hobbit has come to stay and that a large public will be clamouring next year to hear more from you about Hobbits’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Bumpus, the important London bookseller, has taken fifty copies on the basis of the Times review.
13 October 1937 Jane Neave is scheduled to pass through Oxford on her way to London by coach. Tolkien possibly meets her during a stop from 11.50 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. – Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
15 October 1937 Tolkien writes to Stanley Unwin, commenting on reviews of The Hobbit and the letter from Richard Hughes. He notes that no reviewer has mentioned his use of dwarves rather than dwarfs; he himself became aware of his usage only through reading reviews. He is perturbed at the idea of a sequel: he cannot think of anything more to say about hobbits, but he has a great deal to say about the world (of ‘The Silmarillion’) into which Bilbo Baggins intruded. He would like to show this material to Allen & Unwin and get an independent opinion of it. But if it is more about the hobbit that is wanted, he will start to think what can be done. He wonders if possibly such works will be successful enough to allow him to write, rather than spend vacations on examining and such things in order to pay medical and education bills, as he has done for seventeen years. ‘Writing stories in prose or verse has been stolen, often guiltily, from time already mortgaged, and has been broken and ineffective. I may perhaps now do what I much desire to do, and not fail of financial duty. Perhaps!’ (Letters, p. 24). He comments on the reception of The Hobbit in Oxford. ‘The attitude is (as I foresaw) not unmixed with surprise and a little pity. My own college [Pembroke] is I think good for about six copies, if only in order to find material for teasing me’ (Letters, p. 24). He asks if 27 October would be a suitable day for him to have lunch with Unwin. He could bring Mr. Bliss with him to get advice on how to redraw it to make it reproducible. He acknowledges the return of the specimen drawings lent to Houghton Mifflin.
19 October 1937 Stanley Unwin writes to Tolkien. He thinks that Tolkien might well hope for an income from writing. He confirms a lunch appointment for 27 October.
?20 or 27 October 1937 C.S. Lewis reads part of Out of the Silent Planet at a meeting of the Inklings.
21 October 1937 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting.
23 October 1937 Tolkien writes to Stanley Unwin, confirming their lunch appointment on 27 October. He will try to start writing a sequel to The Hobbit soon, and will submit it to Rayner Unwin at the earliest opportunity. – Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
27 October 1937 Tolkien travels to London, probably on the 12.05 train, for a 12.45 lunch with Stanley Unwin. Unwin asks him to submit various writings for consideration. After their meeting Unwin makes a rough list of material that Tolkien has mentioned. These include ‘a volume of short fairy stories in various styles practically ready for publication … (Sil Marillion) [sic]’; ‘the typescript of a History of the Gnomes, and stories arising from it’; Mr. Bliss; The Lost Road, ‘a partly written novel of which we could see the opening chapters’; ‘a great deal of verse of one kind and another which would probably be worth looking at’; a translation of Beowulf ‘upon which he has as yet done very little’; and the ‘Father Christmas’ letters (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Unwin also notes that Tolkien spoke enthusiastically of The Marvellous Land of Snergs by E.A. Wyke-Smith (1927). – Tolkien had planned to travel to London this day in order to attend a lecture by Professor Joseph Vendryes at the British Academy later in the day. But he is tired, and has ‘a worrying business on mind awaiting me at 3 o’clock’ which, in the event, takes ‘so long that I only just managed to squeeze in [an appointment] in Elliott & Fry [the photographers] before my train. But, though I rather rushed them, they were very polite and expeditious, so that I hope the results will be satisfactory’ (letter to Stanley Unwin, 29 October 1937, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). Tolkien has been sent to Elliott & Fry by Allen & Unwin, so that they can have photographs for publicity purposes.
28 October 1937 Stanley Unwin writes to Tolkien. He hopes that by their next meeting, on 17 November, Tolkien ‘will have put together the volume of short fairy stories in various styles. I hope you