From Ex Philologia Lux: Essays in Honour of Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, ed. by Jukka Tyrkkö, Olga Timofeeva and Maria Salenius. [Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique XC]. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Alaric Hall, University of Leeds
Samuli Kaislaniemi, University of Helsinki
On December 13th 1937, the celebrated children’s author Arthur Ransome wrote to J. R. R. Tolkien with a few comments on Tolkien’s newly published book The Hobbit. Tolkien lost no time in replying, and his letter provides one of his earliest comments on his published fiction, and a relatively early explicit commentary on his mythic writing. This article publishes for the first time Tolkien’s response to Ransome in its entirety. An analysis of the letter reveals that while the ‘sources’ and ‘inspirations’ of The Hobbit include the likes of Beowulf and the Poetic Edda as many scholars have shown, already in 1937—and contrary to his own later claims—Tolkien’s principal primary source for fleshing out his prose stories with characters, places, and references to historical events was the vast legendarium he had created himself.