幸福先生 (1982)

《幸福先生》（英语：Mr. Bliss）是英国作家J·R·R·托尔金创作的儿童绘本，故事主要描述了主角“幸福先生”在购买新车路上所遇见的各种麻烦事物。本书虽早在20世纪30年代就已创作完成，但由于印刷费问题直到托尔金过世后的1982年才终被出版。

创作历程

在托尔金以奇幻文学《哈比人历险记》成名之后，便开始着手创作绘本《幸福先生》，他还亲手绘制书中的插图。故事有部分灵感来自1932年时托尔金初次驾驶汽车发生车祸的感受，故事主角“幸福先生”近乎就是托尔金本人的化身。而故事中的汽车可能来自于小儿子克里斯多福·托尔金的玩具车，而三只熊的角色则可能来自于托尔金孩子的泰迪熊玩具。故事中短暂登场的一个小人物“詹吉老人”后来在《魔戒》中便成为了山姆父亲的名字。

当托尔金将本书手稿交给出版社时，出版商为了降低印刷成本而要求托尔金得重新修改插图；但最终手稿却被放在抽屉之内长达数十年，直到1982年才被出版。

中文译本

2013年，台湾联经出版社出版由邓嘉宛翻译的《幸福先生》，保留了英文原版的排版方式。

2016年1月，中国上海人民出版社出版《幸福先生》的简体中文译本，由黄磊与女儿黄多多合力翻译。

Mr. Bliss is a children's picture book by J. R. R. Tolkien, published posthumously in book form in 1982. One of Tolkien's least-known short works, it tells the story of Mr. Bliss and his first ride in his new motor-car. Many adventures follow: encounters with bears, angry neighbours, irate shopkeepers, and assorted collisions.

Narrative

Mr. Bliss tells the story, in pictures and handwritten text, of Mr. Bliss and his first ride in his new motor-car. Many adventures follow: encounters with bears, angry neighbours, irate shopkeepers, and assorted collisions.

Concept and creation

The story was inspired by Tolkien's own vehicular mishaps with his first car, purchased in 1932. The bears were based on toy bears owned by Tolkien's sons. Tolkien was both author and illustrator of the book. His narrative binds the story and illustrations tightly together, as the text often comments directly on the pictures.

Several commentators have compared Mr. Bliss with the works of Beatrix Potter and Edward Lear, and also to The Wind in the Willows.

Mr. Bliss was not published during Tolkien's lifetime. He submitted it to his publishers as a balm to readers who were hungry for more from him after the success of The Hobbit. The ink and coloured pencil illustrations would have made production costs prohibitively expensive. Tolkien agreed to redraw the pictures in a simpler style, but then found he didn't have time to do it. The manuscript lay in a drawer until 1957, when he sold it (as well as the original manuscripts of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Farmer Giles of Ham) to Marquette University for £1,250.

It was first published by George Allen & Unwin in hardback in 1982. It had Tolkien's difficult-to-read handwritten story and illustrations on one page, and a typeset transcription on the facing page.

Alex Lewis, in Mallorn, writes that Tolkien lamented the loss of the countryside in and around Oxfordshire. Tolkien loved nature, especially trees, and had what Lewis calls "well-founded" fears for the environment, "verg[ing] on the prophetic". Lewis analyses the factors that were causing this loss. They included the growth in Oxfordshire's population in the 20th century (doubling between 1920 and 1960); the area's industrialisation by Morris Motors, and the concomitant increase in motor traffic in the city of Oxford; the building of roads, including the M40 motorway cutting across the countryside; and the suburbanisation of Oxford as commuters started to use the railway to allow them to live in Oxford but work in London. The Second World War increased the number of airfields in the area from 5 to 96, causing the Oxfordshire countryside to be "gutted". Tolkien found that it was "difficult [in 1949] to recapture the spirit of the former days, when we used to beat the bounds of the L[ittle] K[ingdom] [as in Farmer Giles of Ham] in an ancient car." Tolkien was horrified by the change that motor traffic wreaked on Oxford, and the air pollution; he gave up his happy but dangerous driving, as depicted in Mr. Bliss, at the start of the war.

Tolkien used two names from Mr. Bliss for hobbits in The Lord of the Rings: Gaffer Gamgee and Boffin.