Letter to Ken Jackson (29 January 1968)
From Tolkien Gateway
On 29 January 1968, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a letter to Ken Jackson.[1][2], that was biology master at New College School.
- Subject: Reply to a reader, concerning permission to name his house "Bag End". Tolkien comments that he did not invent the name; Bag End was the local name for the house of his Aunt Jane Neave.[1]
- Description: One page, typed letter signed.[2]
- Publication: A small excerpt was published by Colin Duriez in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, p. 455.
Transcription[edit | edit source]
My dear Jackson,
Thank you for your kind letter. It may interest you to know that (however unfair it may seem) it is impossible to patent mere names, so that you have no obligation to ask my permission, though I appreciate your courtesy. In the case of Bag-End, I did not invent it, it was in fact the local name of a house an aunt of mine lived in in Worcestershire: an old tumbledown manor house at the end of an untidy lane that led nowhere else.
Yours sincerely,
J.R.R. Tolkien
See also[edit | edit source]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond (2006), The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: I. Chronology, p. 716
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Pieter Collier, "JRR Tolkien 2 signed letters 1968 Handwritten & Typed", Tolkien Library (accessed 30 March 2014)