RIP: Richard C. West (1944-2020)

Richard at the 1987 Mythcon in Milwaukee

 It is with great sadness I note the passing of my old friend and fellow Tolkien and fantasy scholar Richard C. West, from covid-19.  He passed in the early morning of Sunday, November 29th, 2020, in Madison, Wisconsin, and will long be missed. He was 76. 

Myself and Richard at the 1992 Tolkien Centenary Conference in Oxford

When the Snergs book is NOT the Snergs book

 It is fairly well-known that the 1927 children's novel The Marvellous Land of Snergs by E.A. Wyke-Smith was popular with J.R.R. Tolkien and his children, and was an important influence on The Hobbit (1937).  There have been a  number of editions reprinting this important book, including its iconic illustrations by George Morrow. 

Just published in England is a new book titled The Marvellous Land of Snergs, but it is here credited to Veronica Cossanteli, with illustrations by Melissa Castrillon. It is said, on the cover and title-page, to be "based on the original by E.A. Wyke-Smith." But what does that really mean?

The book is published by Chicken House of Frome, Somerset, and the publisher Barry Cunningham describes in "A Message from Chicken House" opposite the title page that, while he loved the original Snergs book, he found it old-fashioned, so it has been "reimagined" for today's young readers. The cynical would note that the original book is in the public domain, and that the publisher has commissioned a modernized knock-off, published under the original title so as to confuse readers into thinking they are reading something close to the original book. But this new version is not very close to the original book, though it takes some of the original characters and scenes, adds to them a bunch of new characters and scenes, sometimes renaming them, and sometimes remaking them into entirely different characters. And the process of modernization tends to diminish Wyke-Smith's sharp humor, making for a very bland result. 

The earlier cover

That a cynical approach to this exploitation is appropriate is shown in a number of ways.  The front cover boasts that this version is "The story that inspired The Hobbit."  It is not.  The rear cover shows prominently Tolkien's famous commendation of the original edition--it is a recommendation for the original book, not for this bowdlerized version. The publisher also evidently wavered on how to credit the authorship of the book, for an earlier cover is currently still on the web (at Amazon.co.uk, for example) which gives the authorship as by "E.A. Wyke-Smith retold by Veronica Cossanteli" (see at right; click on the covers to enlarge).

Both scholars of Tolkien, and readers wishing to experience the book that Tolkien and his children loved, should avoid this exploitation and instead seek a reprint of the original. It is sad to see Wyke-Smith's book treated in this manner.  

 

 

 

The 50th Anniversary of RED MOON AND BLACK MOUNTAIN by Joy Chant

On 10 June 1970, Rayner Unwin sent J.R.R. Tolkien a proof copy of a book he was to publish in the fall. Unwin suggested similarities between the book and The Lord of the Rings, and hoped that Tolkien would enjoy it, adding:  "If you do may I unashamedly ask that you tell me so in precisely one sentence and to allow us to use your commendation to help the book along?"  Tolkien apparently mislaid the proof and the letter, for six weeks later Unwin's secretary sent Tolkien a second copy of the book.  But after Tolkien's death, the original proof and letter turned up and were sold as part of Tolkien's library.  

We don't know if Tolkien ever read any of the book, for he seems to have left no mention of having done so. Yet the book, Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant, was published by Allen & Unwin on 15 October 1970, and this month marks the book's fiftieth anniversary. 

The author was Eileen Joyce Chant (b. 1945), who went by the name Joy Chant. Some years later she married and became Mrs. Eileen Joyce Rutter, so various references sources say that "Joy Chant" is the pseudonym of "Eileen Rutter." This overstates the case, and it is perhaps more accurate to say that "Joy Chant" is the pen-name, and original name, of Joy Rutter.  Be that as it may, it was her first book. It was followed by a nonfiction booklet, Fantasy and Allegory in Literature for Children and Young People (1971); a prequel to Red Moon and Black Mountain entitled The Grey Mane of Morning (1977); another related novel, When Voiha Wakes (1983), and an art-book of Arthurian stories, The High Kings (1983), illustrated by George Sharp.  And then Chant basically ceased publishing. 

Sadly, because Red Moon and Black Mountain was one of the earliest and best of the fantasies of the post-Lord of the Rings generation. It is indeed a product of a writer who has read and absorbed Tolkien, as Chant's comments on Tolkien in her 1975 essay "Niggle and Númenor" make apparent:

The Lord of the Rings is above all a story. There is no question that it is out of step with every current literary fashion: it is extrovert rather than introvert, it has heroes, it delights in the music of words and names and the unselfconscious celebration of beauty; it is active, optimistic, affirmative. At a time when writer swere turning inward, making their chief concern the development and motivation of character, Tolkien was writing books that are pre-eminently narratives. . . .  Tolkien's craftsmanship is astonishing. 

Red Moon and Black Mountain had a number of editions through the 1980s, but after Chant ceased publishing, it went out of print. It's US debut was in the acclaimed Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, and a later edition featured a Frazetta cover. In celebration of the book's fiftieth anniversary, I present a gallery of covers from 1970 through 1983. 

 

Tony Raymond, Allen & Unwin, 1970, and 1977

Bob Pepper, Ballantine Adult Fantasy, 1971

Ian Millar, Ballantine Adult Fantasy, 1973 reprint

Puffin 1973

Herbert Danska, Dutton, 1976

 

The Brothers Hildebrandt, Del Rey, 1977

Unwin Books, 1982

Frank Frazetta, Bantam 1983

Ul de Rico and The Rainbow Goblins

In recent readings of various books by Richard Adams, I pulled off the shelf one that I'd forgotten I owned.  It's The Legend of Te Tuna (1986), a 24 stanza poem based on figures from Polynesian mythology. It was originally published in a limited signed edition by a Los Angeles press in 1982, and then it appeared in a newly illustrated trade edition in England in 1986. I bought it not for the Richard Adams, but for the illustrations by Ul de Rico (the working name of Count Ulderico Gropplero di Troppenburg), and reading the book at last has inspired me to revisit the rest of Ul de Rico's work.  Sadly, it is a small opus. 

Born in Udine, Italy, in 1944, he studied in the 1960s at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, and has lived in Germany for many years.  He has published only four books, but might be better know for his art that appeared in a small number of films.  Notably, he worked in the art department and did the skies and clouds in the film Flash Gordon (1980).  He is credited as the "Scenery, creature and costume designer" for The Neverending Story (1984), which was filmed in Munich. It is based on Michael Ende's novel of the same name, but this film is more an orgy of color and puppetry than the reflection of a literary novel.  It brought about a filmic sequel, The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), which is tepid and dull, and doesn't relate to the original novel.  Ul de Rico is credited in it as a character designer in the Animation Department, but I suspect that this refers to his creation of characters for the original film (the new characters invented for the sequel are quite lacklustre and uncharacteristic).  

But it is Ul de Rico's books which I wish to discuss here. Particularly his first, which appeared in German as Die Regenbogenkobolde (1977), and was translated into English as The Rainbow Goblins (1978). I bought my copy around the time of its first English language publication.  It is a large unwieldy size, about 13 inches by 20 inches. But in this manner Ul de Rico's glorious artwork is showcased around his original short tale. (The paintings were done in oil on oak panels, and in my edition are reproduced at two-thirds the size of the originals. Later editions are in a smaller format.)  The story concerns the seven Rainbow Goblins, each of whom has his own color. They go on a quest to lasso the colors from the rainbow.  It's a delightful children's story, both in the tale and in the artwork.  Two decades later, Ul de Rico penned and illustrated a sequel, The White Goblin (1996).  While it's still enjoyable, the text has moved away from being a simple fairy tale to being that of a moralistic eco-fable. 

His other book reflects his interest in Richard Wagner. It is a retelling of The Ring of the Nibelung (1980), with thirty color paintings published in an oversized volume.  Ul de Rico notes in his introduction, "I did not want to produce stage designs, but have tried to use to the full the medium of book-illustration. This made it possible for me to interpret my ideas without considering the technical problems the stage would present." And that his retelling of the story "is intended only to explain the action in and between the illustrations."  It makes for a marvellous experience. 

Oddly, the Richard Adams volume, The Legend of Te Tuna, is the least interesting of Ul de Rico's works.  Partly this is due to the small size of the book, and partly it is due to the fact that the color illustrations are spread over facing pages, with too much distraction owing to the book's gutter splitting the artwork.

This website shows some of his work here.

P.S. This newly redesigned Blogger format is very user unfriendly, and it really makes it hard to place illustrations. :-(

 

Tolkien Media: Tolkien Himself on Film

Tolkien from the 1962 interview

I believe that there are only two instances where J.R.R. Tolkien was interviewed on film. The first dates from 1962, and the second from 1968.

The first, by John Bowen, was conducted on 10 December 1962, in black-and-white, for the BBC television program "Bookstand". The episode was broadcast two days later, on Wednesday, 12 December, from 10.15-10.45 pm, though the Tolkien segment took up less than nine minutes. John Bowen (1924-2019) was a writer (of novels and dramas, and two children's books) who also worked in television from 1960 through the mid-1980s. He had been an undergraduate at Pembroke College, Oxford (B.A. 1951), and served as the editor of undergraduate magazine Isis. He then read Modern History at St. Anthony's College (M.A. 1953). Bowen was quite an interesting person.  His Guardian obit is here; and a Wikipedia page here. Some snippets of Bowen's interview with Tolkien have, over time, reappeared in various later programs on Tolkien, the most accessible being a one-minute clip* (just after the 37 minute mark) in the "J.R.R. Tolkien" episode (48 minutes long) of the BBC six-episode series An Awfully Big Adventure (1998). (The Tolkien episode was the fourth, broadcast on 21 February 1998. The other episodes were on E. Nesbit, Kenneth Grahame, Arthur Ransome, Dr. Seuss, and Roald Dahl.)

John Bowen in the 1962 interview

I don't know whether the "Bookstand" episode has ever been made public in its entirety, at least since the original broadcast. In some comments from it that I have seen Tolkien made the point (which has been debated by scholars) that The Hobbit was an attempt to write something outside of his already-constructed world, but the hobbits grew into this world: "they became drawn into it."  Another interesting assertion by Tolkien comes after Bowen's comment that Mordor is based on a principle of absolute evil:  "I don't believe in absolute evil, but I do believe in absolute good." Finally, Tolkien comments that there is no religion in The Lord of the Rings for reasons partly aesthetic, partly authorial, and partly because the book comes at the end of a long series of stories which would already explain why there are no visible temples, etc.

The second instance of Tolkien being interviewed on film was in 1968 for the BBC program Release, which was normally made up of two twenty-plus minute segments. The Tolkien part, titled Tolkien in Oxford, was filmed between the 5th and 9th of February 1968. It was directed by Leslie Megahey (b. 1944), who like Bowen had been an undergraduate at Pembroke College, Oxford (B.A. 1965), and he and journalist John Ezard (who had previously interviewed Tolkien for newspapers) were Tolkien's (mostly off-screen)** interviewers. The program was broadcast on 30 March 1968, from 9.50 to 10.35, with the Tolkien segment apparently following one on the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. The Tolkien part of the program clocked in at about 26 and a half minutes, and in 2014 the BBC posted it online through their archives. It can be seen by clicking here (though there are location restrictions; a google search may turn up other appearances).***

The footage of Tolkien himself is only about seven and a half minutes total. Some of these Tolkien scenes have been clipped and reused in later documentaries on Tolkien. The 1968 program has, basically, four types of filmed color scenes. The most interesting type is those in which Tolkien discusses his works. These were filmed at the Old Palace, the Catholic Chaplaincy in Oxford. Here is an establishing shot showing Tolkien sitting in front of a fireplace.

 Most of this footage shows Tolkien in closeup.

The next type of footage was shot at night while Tolkien watched fireworks at the Dragon School in north Oxford. This footage has little dialogue. (Tolkien's grandson, Simon, then aged 9, appears briefly next to his grandfather at the 13 minute-2 second mark.)

The third type of footage shows Tolkien walking around in the daytime in Oxford, sometimes wearing a hat, sometimes without it.

Besides the above filmed scenes, the 1968 program includes some still photos of Tolkien having lunch at the Eastgate Hotel. Here is one.

The above samples should make it possible to determine the origin of the various clips of Tolkien that reappear in later documentaries.

For many years it was rumored that there was a lot of film footage of Tolkien that was not used.  Finally, beginning in 2001, some of this material turned up****, and recently it has been made available in selected forms. Tolkien scholar Stuart Lee has been very active in presenting this new material. Here is the link to an short (under four minutes) introduction by Stuart Lee in a video put out by the University of Oxford in 2016.

A showing of some of the clips, with commentary by director Leslie Megahey, was arranged in Oxford in 2014. The 37-minute discussion between Lee and Megahey can be heard on a podcast here.

Leslie Megahey spoke at the Annual General Meeting of the Tolkien Society in April 2015. A video (without the documentary audio or visuals) can be viewed here.

BBC Radio 4 also broadcast a nearly one-hour program Tolkien: The Lost Recordings, narrated by Joss Ackland, on Saturday, 6 August 2016. It includes Stuart Lee, Leslie Megahey, and three people (besides Ackland) from the original 1968 film: researcher Patrick O'Sullivan, Tolkien-fan Michael Hebbert, and critic Valentine Cunningham. Also appearing are Tom Shippey, Dimitra Fimi, and Tolkien's Merton College colleague Dr. Roger Highfield. It can be heard here.  (The Joss Ackland narration is annoying, unnecessary, and really regrettable.)

Most significantly, Stuart Lee produced a long history of the program, with transcriptions of Tolkien's commentary, as "'Tolkien in Oxford' (BBC, 1968): A Reconstruction" which appeared in Tolkien Studies volume 15 (2018): pp. 115-176. It is highly recommended. 

I'm very grateful to Charles E. Noad who shared his expertise as I was putting together this post.

Notes:

*About thirty seconds of this section is available here on youtube (with Finnish subtitles), beginning at the 9-second mark.

**Director Leslie Megahey appears walking alongside of Tolkien near Merton College, at about the 5 minute-20 second mark.

***In the text on the BBC Archive page it names John Ezard incorrectly as "John Izzard", and it suggests that Ezard met Tolkien at his home, implying that some footage might have been filmed there. This seems very unlikely, for a number of reasons, not least of which would be Tolkien and his wife's concern for privacy. They had been very annoyed when W.H. Auden had been quoted in the press in January 1966 as saying of Tolkien: "He lives in a hideous house--I can not tell you how hideous, with hideous pictures on the walls." Stuart Lee has suggested that the shots of Tolkien in front of a fireplace were taken at his home on Sandfield Road. I don't think that Tolkien would have allowed a film crew in. And those shots of Tolkien by a hearth are compatible, if taken from a wider view and from a different angle, with the the close-up shots of Tolkien at the Oxford Catholic Chaplaincy. In fact when you compare the shapes of the arms of the chair in which Tolkien is seated, and the positioning of the beer on the table next to Tolkien, it seems to be the same location. Additionally, it would have been both time-consuming and expensive for the film crew to set-up in Tolkien's house for merely a few shots.

****Some audio clips were used in Brian Sibley's J.R.R. Tolkien: An Audio Portrait (2001), issued on CDs. Some video clips appeared in the not-very-good 80+ minute documentary J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of the Rings--The Definitive Guide to the World of the Rings (2001), the full of which is currently available here. [NB: There is an entirely different documentary of approximately 60 minutes, also released in 2001 and similarly and confusingly titled The Master of the Rings. To add further confusion the 80+ minute documentary was itself retitled and repackaged in 2004 as The Story of J.R.R. Tolkien: Master of the Rings.]  Stuart Lee has noted that some of these JRRT clips were subsequently posted online. (The Romanian Tolkien Society sometime posted a sequence of seven video outtakes: numbers 2, 6 and 7 are from the 2001 documentary.  Numbers 3, 5 and 6 are very short and without sound.  The first of the seven can be accessed here--the rest will play sequentially afterwards.) In April 2007, along with the release of The Children of Hurin, two additional clips appeared on BBC's Newsnight. (The 5 minute-10 second news story, which also features Tolkien's grandson Adam, is accessible here, with the two JRRT clips beginning at the 40 second mark, and at the 3 minute-36 second mark.)  Another two clips, spliced together to make nearly three minutes, appears here.

Tolkien and Sterling Lanier: the "Lord of the Rings" Figurines

The details of Tolkien's epistolary friendship with the US editor, writer and sculptor Sterling Lanier (1927-2007) are difficult to ascertain, and various accounts differ as to the chronology and extent of their correspondence.  In 1973, Lanier wrote that "it began in 1951" and amounted to some "dozen or so letters we exchanged over the years." In a 1974 fanzine profile of Lanier by Piers Anthony, it notes that Lanier had had "ten years of correspondence" with Tolkien. In 2016,  a book dealer had for sale six letters from Tolkien to Lanier, plus one from Tolkien's wife. That batch began in 1965, when Tolkien had received a second batch of Lanier's sculptures of characters from The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's wife wrote that Tolkien thought the dwarf very good. Though Lanier sculpted professionally, and made his living at it for years, the Lord of the Rings figurines were never released publicly and photographs of them have been few and hard to find. 

Now the same book dealer who had the Tolkien-Lanier letters, has a set of the Lord of the Rings figurines for sale. Here is the page from the recent catalog, along with details of the seller. (Full disclosure: I have no relationship with the seller, nor any involvement with the sale. I am publicizing it here solely because of the chance, at long last, to see the set of figurines and share the photographs with other Tolkien fans. So far as I know, only one photograph--of the Legolas figurine--appeared in print previously, and that as long ago as 1974.) Click on the images to make them larger.

The obituary of Lanier (quoted in the listing) from the Sarasota Herald Tribune is inaccurate in many ways, particularly with regard to the legalities involved in officially licensing any reproduction of the figurines.  Tolkien himself did not control such rights, and his publisher told him (a fact related by Tolkien to Lanier) that such merchandising rights were controlled by United Artists, who--at that time, subsequent to a 1969 contract--owned the film rights to The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien noted that it would please him if it proved possible for Lanier to market his figures subject to paying a small fee to United Artists. But it appears that Lanier never attempted to do so.

How many figures Lanier did of Lord of the Rings characters, or how many sets, is not known for certain. Clearly some of the ones he first sent to Tolkien were trials. As late as November 1972 Tolkien was thanking Lanier for a new bronzed set.

The above set for sale shows nine figures, Gandalf at the left in pewter, with the other eight in bronze, left to right, an orc, Samwise, another orc, Frodo, a third orc, Gimli, Legolas and a hooded Nazgul.

Charles Roberts has an interesting post at the Wonder Book Blog on Lanier, titled "A Sterling Character." Here's the direct link.  (Lanier was a regular customer at Wonder Books beginning around 1985 or so.) I reproduce below two of the photos from that blog, one with several figurines that Lanier had given to Roberts, in the middle of which you can see Legolas, Frodo, and a hooded Nazgul.  Roberts quotes a previous sale listing for a set of figurines as one of only three sets.  The second photo is one of Lanier himself.

Finally, here is a photograph of Lanier's sculptures for three other famous literary characters, Ratty, Toad, and Mole from Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows.

Fantasy from Bantam Books after the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series ended

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series ended in 1974. Other publishers had capitalized on the trend of marketing books as fantasy, and some publishers had started their own lines. Bantam Books was then well-known for their science fiction line, and at this time they marketed a small number of their titles as Fantasy. This advertisement (from a Bantam book published in the Spring of 1976) gives a list.

Of the thirteen titles listed here, I have seen only five that were labelled specifically as "Fantasy." The three books by Samuel R. Delany were labelled science fiction, as are the titles by Frank Herbert, Mack Reynolds, and Joanna Russ. Bantam published a number of titles by Ray Bradbury, but all the copies I've seen are labelled science fiction instead of fantasy.

The most significant fantasy titles that were published by Bantam between 1974 and 1976 are the three volumes of the Earthsea Trilogy (back then there were only three books). All three have nice uncredited covers: the art is by Pauline Ellison (b. 1946)--there is a nice profile of her: Part one here; and part two here. (I confess I'm more fond of her style of illustrations as shown in part one.) The Bantam paperback of A Wizard of Earthsea came out in August 1975; The Tombs of Atuan in September 1975; and The Farthest Shore in October 1975.

The other two fantasy titles are odder and off-trail books. The first is The Man Who Lived in Inner Space, by Arnold Federbush (1935-1993), published in May 1975. It is labelled "Fantasy" on the spine.

The final book is Star of the Unborn by Franz Werfel (1890-1945), who was born in Prague but wrote in German. The original edition was posthumously published in 1946, and translated into English in the same year by Gustave O. Arlt. It is a strange visionary novel that reminds one of works by Olaf Stapledon and David Lindsay. The Bantam edition (labelled Fantasy on the spine) was published in May 1976. The intriguing cover art is by Gene Szafran.

These five titles make for an odd fantasy list, but most of them would not have been out of place in the original Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, and would also be of considerable interest to readers of the Ballantine series.