J.R.R. Tolkien

Uncorrected proof of the first US edition of Tolkien's long essay on fairy tales, accompanied by an exemplary story — W.H. Auden's copy.

• J.R.R. Tolkien (English).
• Tree and Leaf, Includes Mythopoeia and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth.
• Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965.
• 82 pages.
• With Auden's marginal marks throughout and his notes on the final leaf. 
• Original plastic-comb-bound printed pale blue wrappers.

"In describing a fairy story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: 'this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty'. But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that begun thus: 'this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy'; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate."

Though unsigned, this copy is W.H. Auden's, with his markings in the text and notes (including a list of the seven deadly sins) on the blank verso of the last leaf. Auden famously wrote a 1954 New York Times review raving about The Fellowship of The Rings, which in no small part helped legitimize Tolkien in literary circles: "No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy." He also shared a friendly correspondence with Tolkien, exchanging letters frequently over the years and receiving advance copies of the next two installments of the series. He also, the year after Tree And Leaf appeared, spoke at a New York gathering of the Tolkien Society. Tolkien himself later contributed a lovely poem in Anglo-Saxon and English titled "For W.H.A." as part of a festschrift for Auden's sixtieth birthday in Shenandoah. This book, in many ways a critical defense of the kind of stories Auden had previously so lavishly praised, would have undoubtedly been of particular interest. An excellent association and rare in this format.