J·R·R·托尔金书信集 (1981)

《托尔金书信集》（英语：The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien）是作家J·R·R·托尔金的书信选集，1981年时由汉弗莱·卡彭特在克里斯多夫·托尔金帮助下整理出版。包含了J·R·R·托尔金从1914年10月一直到1973年8月29日间所写的354封信，写信的对象包括妻子伊迪丝、四名子女、朋友、出版商、书迷、评论家等。

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is a selection of the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien's letters. It was published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter, who was assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection, from a large mass of materials, contains 354 letters. These were written between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death. The letters are of interest both for what they show of Tolkien's life and for his interpretations of his Middle-earth writings.

Contents

The book has a 3-page introduction by its editor, Humphrey Carpenter. He notes that an "enormous quantity of material [had] to be omitted, and that only passages of particular interest could be included." Among the omissions is "the very large body of letters" written between 1913 and 1918 to Edith Bratt, who later became his wife. Carpenter notes that few letters from the period between 1918 and 1937 survive, and those "unfortunately" say nothing about the writing of The Silmarillion or of The Hobbit.

The body of the 1981 edition consists of extracts from 354 of J. R. R. Tolkien's many letters. The first, dated October 1914, is to Bratt, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford. The last, dated 29 August 1973, is to Priscilla Tolkien, his youngest child, four days before his death.

The letters are accompanied by detailed notes, and by an index compiled by the Tolkien scholars Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond.

The letters can be roughly divided into four categories:

Personal letters to Tolkien's wife Edith, his son Christopher Tolkien, and his other children

Letters about Tolkien's career as a professor of Anglo-Saxon

Letters to his publishers at Allen & Unwin

Letters about Tolkien's Middle-earth writings

Letters 29 and 30 show that a German translation of The Hobbit was being negotiated in 1938. The German publishing firm enquired whether Tolkien was of "arisch" (Aryan, i.e. non-Jewish) origin. Tolkien was infuriated by the inherent racism of this enquiry, and wrote two drafts of possible replies for his publisher to choose. Only one draft has survived, in which Tolkien pointed out the misuse of the word "Aryan" by the Nazis, and answered the inquiry to a possible Jewish origin as follows: "I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people".

Having fought in the First World War, Tolkien wrote many letters during the Second World War to his son Christopher, including his reaction to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, in which he calls the bombmakers of the Manhattan Project "lunatic" and "Babel builders".

In 1951, Tolkien hoped that Collins would publish both The Lord of the Rings and a selection from his legendarium, including material that his son Christopher later edited to form The Silmarillion. To help persuade them that the two were "interdependent and indivisible", Tolkien sent a long letter (#131) to Milton Waldman of Collins, outlining the foundations and ambitions of his writings, and giving a potted history of the whole story from the creation, through the First, Second and Third Ages, and finishing with a reference to The Hobbit and a lengthy outline of The Lord of the Rings. The Tolkien scholar Colin Duriez describes the 10,000-word letter as "one of the best keys to the extraordinary legendarium".

Other letters discuss subjects as widely varied as the location of Middle-earth ("the actual Old World of this planet", p. 220, #165), the shape of hobbits' ears ("only slightly pointed", #27) and the source of the "Downfall of Númenor" in Tolkien's recurring dream of Atlantis (#163).