The New Arrivals: ART OF THE HOBBIT and MR. BLISS

So, a while back my wife saw a box from amazon.co.uk that had just arrived and asked, 'have we run out of books over here that we now have to start importing them?'

Well, maybe. It used to be in the old days that the only way to get ahold of a book published in England but not the US was to set up a trade with someone in England wherein you'd buy books for them over here and ship them over there, while they'd buy an equivalent amount of books over there and ship them over here. I've had three book-trades going on over the years (with Jessica Yates, and Christina Scull, and Charles Noad), and I have them to thank for many items I'd never have been able to come across myself (such as the limited edition HOMECOMING OF BEORHTNOTH and all those Pratchetts Charles stood in line to have signed for me), and sent off many a volume from this side to hold up my end.

Nowaday with amazon.co.uk, it's easier to just buy direct -- but not always, as some items can only be sold in one country or the other (e.g., the soon-to-be-released Kindle version of THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT, which initially at least will be UK-only, alas). You can get killed on the exchange rate and shipping, but for some books it's worth it. And the latest such are two that arrived together on Wednesday: the new edition of MR. BLISS, and THE ART OF THE HOBBIT

To take the first one first, I remember the days when MR. BLISS was The Great Unknown: we knew there was an unpublished hand-illustrated children's book by Tolkien at the Marquette Archives but v. little about what it was about. My first letter to the Archives (which Chuck Elston showed me still in the files years later) was in fact a request to see if I cd have a copy made (they said no). And so the first task on my first weekday in Milwaukee once I arrived there in August 1981 was to go to the Archives, introduce myself, and ask to see MR. BLISS. I spent what little free time I had (this was the opening week of grad school for me to work on my Ph.D.,* and also the week I started teaching freshmen English at Marquette, along with all the business of moving into a new apartment in a new city) transcribing it into a notebook (which I still have, having unearthed it from among The Boxes not long ago). And I remember shortly thereafter when the photographers came in to take careful pictures of the original book in preparation for its publication the following year (in 1982).

To be honest, while it was a thrill to read a new piece by Tolkien, the story itself was a bit of a disappointment. Unlike FARMER GILES OF HAM, which is a little gem in its own right, and THE FATHER CHRISTMAS LETTERS, which have a sort of charm of their own, I've never really warmed to MR. BLISS or ROVERANDOM (which I heard a lot about in 1987 but had to wait to read till 1998, like everybody else).

This being the case, I have to say I really like this new (third) edition of BLISS. The first combined a facsimile of the original with typeset text on facing pages -- not really necessary, I thought, since Tolkien used clear and highly readable 'uncial' lettering -- but unfortunately they decided to replace the original cream-colored pages (from natural browning of good-quality paper over the preceding fifty years) with greyish paper, which bleached out the art somewhat.

This was replaced by a beautiful slipcase edition in the same format (facsimile on right-hand pages, facing typeset transcription on facing left-hand pages) but kept the original paper-color, so that the art came through better). I saw this second edition in Blackwells while in England in 2007 but have never seen it for sale over here; they really did a nice job of it.

Now here comes the third edition, which is really two books in one. The front cover shifts the orientation of the book from manuscript's horizontal orientation (i.e., the pages are wider than they are tall) to a more normal vertical orientation (like, say, FARMER GILES or TREE & LEAF or any of the other smallish Tolkien volumes). They've also typeset the whole with the pictures interspersed where needed, making for an attractive little book.

And for those who prefer the original, all you have to do is flip the volume over and there's the whole story again, this time in its original horizontal orientation, facsimile pages, and facing transcription pages. So in fact here we have the same book twice, starting from the respective outside covers and both ending in the middle. It's an interesting and I thought highly effective layout; well done, HarperCollins! There's also a brief (two-page) introduction [unsigned] that sets the stage while adroitly avoiding the various unknowns about the tale (exactly when it was written, its inspiration, &c).

All in all, a nice little volume that shd get a little more attention to this minor but amusing little bit of Tolkien.

Next up: THE ART OF THE HOBBIT

--John R.

*and also the week of the infamous episode in which I met with my advisor for the first time, and he told me "I don't want to catch you working on Tolkien while you're here". Ah, those were the days.

Dating a Tolkien Tale (Mr. Bliss)

So, one of the benefits of living in this, the Golden Age of Tolkien Studies, is that we're getting very close to understanding the sequence between Tolkien's various works, thanks to tomes such as the Scull-Hammond Chronology (Vol. I of their COMPANION & GUIDE). There are still a few places where it's hazy just where a work fits in, such as FARMER GILES OF HAM (where an equally good case can be made out for its either immediately preceding or immediately following upon THE HOBBIT), but by and large the sequence is coming into focus.
Today in connection with something else I was working on I came across something that might lock down another piece of the chronological puzzle. There are two suggested dates for the little picture book Tolkien drew called MR. BLISS: 1932 or shortly thereafter, or the summer of 1928. The 1932 date was suggested by Humphrey Carpenter in TOLKIEN: A BIOGRAPHY (page 163, [1977]), on the basis that Tolkien bought his first car in 1932 and had several misadventures of his own in driving it (being apparently entirely self-taught as a driver) which in turn Carpenter felt inspired the story.
This date was challenged in 1982, just after the story's first publication, by a letter Joan Tolkien (JRRT's daughter-in-law) wrote to THE SUNDAY TIMES on 10 Oct. 1982, in which she stated that her husband Michael, the Tolkiens' middle son, 'clearly recalled the tale being told to them and it appears in a diary he kept as a Dragon school summer holiday task in 1928'. On the basis of this, Scull & Hammond include it in their Chronology under the entry for '?Summer 1928' (Vol. I, page 146). However, there are two indicators that shows Carpenter was probably right after all.
First of all, in the catalogue that accompanied the display of Tolkien manuscripts in conjunction with the 1987 Marquette Tolkien Conference, Jared Lobdell cites a letter from Christopher Tolkien stating the latter's belief that the handwriting was 'from the 1930s rather than the slightly more florid manner he employed in the mid-1920s (CT to JL, 11 Feb. 1987). Since no one is more familiar with his father's handwriting and manuscripts that Christopher Tolkien, his opinions carry considerable weight in such matters.
Second, in a 1964 letter to Christopher Bretherton (LETTERS pages 347-348), Tolkien notes that he made up the name 'Gaffer Gamgee' during a vacation to Lamorna Cove in Cornwall, near Land's End, and that 'the name became part of family lore'. Scull and Hammond (Chronology page 164) date this vacation specifically to August/September 1932, based no doubt on the account in THE TOLKIEN FAMILY ALBUM, which actually reproduces a photograph from this trip of Tolkien digging in the sand with his children (page 62). This dating becomes significant, because Gaffer Gamgee makes a cameo appearance in MR. BLISS: his name appears on page 37 ('old Gaffer Gamgee is trying hard to hear') and the old man himself, with long beard, wearing a bowler hat, and hobbling along on two canes, is shown in the illo on page 36. Therefore, if it's true that Gaffer Gamgee entered the family lore during the trip to Cornwall in 1932, MR. BLISS as we have it must postdate that vacation.
Given that Tolkien did not finish THE HOBBIT until January of 1933 (if my reconstruction of that work's composition is correct), then MR. BLISS must date from no earlier than the summer of 1933. In any case, it was certainly complete by the fall of 1936, when it was submitted to Allen & Unwin as a possible follow-up to THE HOBBIT (along with FARMER GILES, THE LOST ROAD, the QUENTA SILMARILLION, THE LAY OF LEITHIAN, and other works).


--JDR