J.R.R. Tolkien | Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970

J.R.R. Tolkien.

Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, sending her a poster map of Middle Earth by Pauline Baynes which he believes “catches something of atmosphere”, but with various strictures about Baynes’s map (“…The vignettes though good do not follow the textual description: etc. etc...”), 2 pages, 8vo, 7 August 1970, light blue paper, slight creasing, with later envelope (“For Eleanor – A letter from Prof Tolkien. Love from AR”)

TOLKIEN’S CRITIQUE OF A FAMOUS AND MUCH-REPRODUCED MAP OF MIDDLE EARTH. Pauline Baynes (1922-2008) was an illustrator who had worked with Tolkien on Farmer Giles of Ham (1948) and several later projects. Tolkien admired her work, writing in this letter that her work is “at worst far better than any other illustrator I have tried”. Maps were very important to Tolkien’s creative process (he once explained that “I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit”) so it is unsurprising that he was sensitive about this commission. Tolkien lent her his own sketch maps for this project, and will have been reassured by her wartime experience drawing charts for the Royal Navy as well as her decision to seek professional cartographic assistance when preparing her map. Tolkien’s dissatisfaction with finished work comes down to her lack of engagement with the text itself: “I found she actually proposed to do the map, without having read The L.R.! I rebuked her, but she has not even so (evidently) read it more than casually.”

Baynes’s map of Middle Earth, printed as a poster by Allen & Unwin in 1970, includes illustrations of the Fellowship, the Ring Wraiths and other evil creatures, as well as ten vivid vignettes of locations from Hobbiton to Mount Doom. Both the map itself and Baynes’s calligraphy have had a substantial influence on later representations of Middle Earth.

The recipient of this letter and the copy of the poster (not present) was Amy Ronald, a frequent correspondent in Tolkien’s later years to whom he regularly sent gifts of new editions and translations of his work. This letter was given by Ronald to the daughter of a close friend, on learning that she had just read and enjoyed The Hobbit.