He is one of the world's most famous novelists, with more than 150m copies of his fantasy masterpieces sold across the globe, but JRR Tolkien always dreamed of finding recognition as a poet. Tolkien struggled to publish his poetry collections during his career, although he included nearly 100 poems in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Now, half a century after his death, 70 previously unpublished poems are to be made available in a landmark publication.
The Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien will be published by HarperCollins next month, featuring more than 195 of his poems. His son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, had wanted his father's poetic talent to be better known and, before his own death in 2020, worked on the project with two leading Tolkien experts, the husband-and-wife Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond. Hammond told the Observer that there are "remarkably good" unpublished poems in the collection: "This will show even more Tolkien's love of language, his love of words.
" Scull said: "The poems will add more to our view of Tolkien as a creative writer." They waded through a "great mass" of manuscripts and typescripts, some in Christopher's possession and others in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, among other archives. The texts ranged from "beautiful calligraphy to the worst scrawl", Hammond said.
View image in fullscreen The three-volume boxed collection includes 70 previously unpublished poems by JRR Tolkien. Photograph: Harper Collins During the first world war, Tolkien had been a signals officer with the Lancashire Fusiliers when he was posted to France and saw action on the Somme. In late.
.. Dalya Alberge.
