MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
Tolkien was a great letter writer and often kept copies or drafts of what he sent. This selection, edited by his biographer Humphrey Carpenter with the help of Christopher Tolkien, gathers some 350 letters written between 1914 and 1973, to his family, friends, publishers and readers.
They give an inside view of his life, his work as a scholar and above all the long writing of The Lord of the Rings, with many explanations about Middle-earth that appear nowhere else. George Allen and Unwin published the book in 1981. A revised and expanded edition, restoring letters and passages cut from the first, came out in 2023.
Some 350 letters by Tolkien, full of insights into his life, his scholarship and the making of Middle-earth.