Important Twentieth-Century Autographs, British Royalty, Memorabilia

Notes
The description for Lot 378 (p.45) includes extracts from a letter to Miss Morley, dated 8 November 1971, responding to decline her offer of secretarial assistance - A&U now provide all the assistance he needs. He goes on to explain why his manner of composition makes any assistance impractical - "My (first) written drafts are usually beyond a secretary's (and sometimes my own) power of decipherment, and I always use a typewriter myself for their revision."

Tolkien also wonders how Miss Morley had obtained his private address in Poole - "It was in order to have one that I with regret left Oxford, to escape the intolerable persecution and invasion of my time and privacy (even at night)."

The first page of the letter is reproduced in a photograph.

The letter is not included in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981).