It must be difficult for young Tolkien fans in these days of the internet and mass marketing to realise what life was like when all you could buy was the Allen & Unwin 3-volume hardcovers. This is a look back to those deprived years.
Being born in the year that "Fellowship" was published, I feel a certain affinity for Tolkien's tale. We grew up together. In the early to mid sixties, just as my reading horizons were expanding, awareness of the four books was growing. "The Hobbit" was serialised in the girl's comic my mother used to buy me. All of a sudden I had to fight my brother to get a look at it! It was illustrated - Bilbo was cute and bulgy, his toes hidden by curly hair. At the library we searched for more Tolkien books, and found "Lord of the Rings". I first tried to read it when I was nine. I wasn't quite up to the complexity. I got as far as Isengard - I have very clear memories of the black rider flying overhead and Gandalf crying "The nazgul have crossed the river" - and sank in the sea of detail. Two years later I started again, and devoured it. I convinced my mother that Tolkien's four volumes would be all the Christmas present I needed, and I haven't stopped since. There is a photo of myself and my brother, on banana chairs in the backyard during the holidays - I'm reading "The Two Towers", he's reading "Fellowship", and wondering how long I'm going to hold him up when he finishes. Those books were mine! I always had first call on them.
In 1968, the BBC transmitted their serialisation of "The Hobbit" - imagine two heads as close as possible to the radio every Sunday evening for six weeks. My brother modeled Middle Earth in paper mache. I spent weeks at a time drawing incredibly detailed maps of imaginary worlds on sheets of cartridge paper (around A2 size), in ink with ultra fine nib pens. I copied "Middle Earth" lettering, learned Gothic script, and used a magnifying glass to draw the details in the cities - none of them survived the trip to Australia.
In this age of the internet, the illustrated "Lord of the Rings", the films, of calendars, diaries, and guides it is hard to realise what a vacuum Tolkien fans lived in. On the radio we heard that Tolkien was writing "The Silmarillon". In the meantime we read and reread the books and drew our own illustrations. Like many others, I had my fantasies, but I joined no groups. Like Tolkien, Middle Earth was my escape from reality - I had no desire to build it into my everyday life.
1970 was a turning point. I was 15 and could hold down a part time job. With the money I earned I bought the Pauline Baynes illustrated poster map. It is still hanging on my wall. (In fact I've just had it properly framed, and my daughters are arguing about who's going to inherit it when I die!) I was also allowed to wander further afield and explored bigger bookshops. I started buying other Tolkien books. The Road Goes Ever On, Tree and Leaf, then The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major. I also bought Paul Kocher's Master of Middle Earth and discovered how much of the delight of a work a literary scholar could miss.
That was 1973, the year of tragedy. Tolkien died, the Silmarillion still incomplete. But that was the year Bo Hansson released his now forgotten album "Music inspired by Lord of the Rings". I still have it. I still play it occasionally. It was a sign of things to come, of an increasing volume of creation inspired by Tolkien. Annual calendars made their appearance. In 1976 Tyler, with appalling timing, produced the first of the guides, "The Tolkien Companion". The following year Christopher Tolkien made it obsolete, with the publication of "The Silmarillion". More map posters and an authorised biography (by Humphrey Carpenter) also appeared that year.
Since then there has been a steady string of popular guides, Tolkien-inspired art work and literary criticism (which I'm not keen on) not to mention Christopher Tolkien's steady editing and publication of his father's mass of papers. I must confess that I lost interest in the latter. My interest was in Tolkien's fully developed Middle Earth and the further the series went, the further it moved from the well developed Middle Earth of my fantasies, and the more difficult it became for me to relate to it.
Despite my passion for Middle Earth, I never went to see (and don't plan to see) the Ralph Bakshi cartoon. To me, Middle Earth was a REAL place, peopled by REAL beings. Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, & co were all living, breathing, very three dimensional beings, and I have no desire to see a flat representation of them. The BBC's 26 part adaptation was another matter. Alan (my husband) and I religiously recorded every episode, and still have the tapes (for the car, we bought the CDs when they came out of course).
Now as the books and I approach 50, we are both enjoying a flowering and rejuvenation. My daughters are growing up and discovering Tolkien for themselves. I no longer have to draw Middle Earth for myself - Alan Lee and John Howe do a fantastic job. Yes, I enjoyed Peter Jackson's "Fellowship" and am looking forward to "Towers" and "Return" (thoughts on another page). I no longer read the books annually, but then I have short term eidetic memory, and can recall much of it without rereading.
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Background: Design from the 1st Edition dust cover (1966). Image used without permission.
Last update 11/12/02
Copyright © Susan H Law, 2002, and her licensors. All rights reserved.