“This bound them together until the end of their lives and it was perhaps the strongest force in their marriage.

“A principal source of happiness to them was their shared love for their family,” Carpenter wrote in JRR Tolkien: A Biography. But where they were wholly united was in their love for their children. Their interests differed greatly and Edith struggled to adjust to the life of an Oxford don’s wife. Tolkien’s marriage to his beloved Edith was not without its issues, as his biographer Humphrey Carpenter notes. As his children grew older, the letters became more complex and playful, as he continued to develop them. For the near-25-year span of his four children’s childhood, he continued writing the letters and creating many beautiful drawings to accompany them, through some of the busiest times of his academic career. The immediate impression you get in reading this collection is of Tolkien, the devoted father. Each letter and the accompanying drawings and sketches serve to create the world and character of Father Nicholas Christmas, his clumsy and endearing Polar Bear and the goblins, elves and other beasts that inhabit Tolkien’s North Pole. The letters, enjoyable in themselves, also provide invaluable insight into Tolkien’s seemingly irrepressible creative energy. They even took to sending letters to Santa, enquiring as to his health and furnishing him with their Christmas lists. Among these is his delightful, whimsical collection of Letters from Father Christmas.īeginning in 1920 with a letter to his first child, John, and concluding in 1943 with a final, poignant letter to his youngest daughter, Priscilla, Tolkien’s letters became a part of his children’s Christmases. Epic in the breadth of its world building, epic also in the span of its action and, finally, epic in the scope of its moral vision, Tolkien’s work has enchanted the world – to use his own language – for decades.Īs a result of his fame and the interest in his works, a number of treasures that would otherwise have gone unnoticed have been unearthed and published.

JRR Tolkien exists in the minds of many as the creator the 20th century’s great epic, The Lord of the Rings.

Ruadhán Jones explores a little-known Christmas treasure by JRR Tolkien

Jrr tolkien christmas letters