I picked up the first version of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, getting it a bargain rate that day. You, if you want the book, will probably prefer to get the Revised and expanded edition, which has the further advantage of being cheaper (in the Kindle edition) than the one I’m reading (which, aside from containing fewer letters, features an unfortunate number of typos – “orcs” often comes out as “ores,” for instance.

It is, for me, a somewhat emotional read. Though I am not such a coxcomb as to compare my own work to The Professor’s, I can certainly identify – within my limits – with the agonies he went through getting the whole thing written down and published – a process that took something in the neighborhood of two decades. (He openly admits that he probably wouldn’t have finished it without the encouragement, or even the nagging, of C. S. Lewis.)

His publishing history, at least, is almost as complicated as mine. George Allen & Unwin published The Hobbit. They very much wanted a sequel, but when Tolkien went to work, his story expanded in an alarming way. His correspondence with them, over many years, focused on his frequent excuses why he hadn’t been able to do much work, because of obligations at Oxford. Which was no doubt true, especially during the war years. He was also working on the Silmarillion, and he seems to have come to consider that work the real center of the project, with the Lord of the Rings a more peripheral matter. Allen & Unwin were interested in the “Hobbit sequel,” and happy enough to discuss that, whenever it would be finished at last. When they decided against publishing the Silmarillion, Tolkien clearly took offense. When another publisher (Collins) made noises of interest, Tolkien actually tried to push Allen & Unwin away. He says in one letter to them:

My work has escaped from my control, and I have produced a monster: an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and very terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion.

But Allen & Unwin didn’t want the Silmarillion (at that point). Then the Collins editor changed his mind, and Tolkien seems to have despaired, having gone from a strong to a weak negotiating position. Eventually Rayner Unwin, his former student, reopened communications, and Tolkien – visibly humbled – agreed at last to let Allen & Unwin publish it without the Silmarillion, and (against his preferences) in three volumes.

The rest is history.

I too know the experience of wrong-footing it with a publisher – without quite so happy an outcome. But I could identify, certainly. One feels so attached to one’s own books that it’s hard to distinguish literary criticism from personal slight. No matter how you try to be objective, it’s hard to keep feelings leashed. The situation is too subjective; there are no landmarks to go by. Especially if you’re slightly unstable – and what author was ever very stable? Publishers must lead frustrating lives and require thick skin, dealing with us. Some of them are rumored to drink, and it’s hard to blame them.

As for my own delayed work The Baldur Game, I’ve got all the notes from my readers now, and am doing (what I hope is) the final read-through. Still waiting for my cover art, which I’m confident will be a masterpiece, and well worth the wait.