MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
Marquette University in Milwaukee holds the original manuscripts of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Farmer Giles of Ham and Mr. Bliss. Its library director William B. Ready approached Tolkien in 1956, when no one else wanted his papers, and bought them for 1,500 pounds; the first boxes arrived in 1957 and The Lord of the Rings the year after, more than 7,000 leaves of drafts, typescripts and proofs, with up to eighteen drafts of a single chapter.
It also gathers books by and about Tolkien, fanzines, recordings and the collections of scholars and fans. The manuscripts are consulted on site, so the website is a description, not a digital archive, but it tells how the pages got there.
The archive that holds the manuscripts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, bought from Tolkien in the fifties.
