JRR Tolkien Reads and Sings The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring Conversations with Smaug Cassette hotsell Tape Caedmon

JRR Tolkien Reads and Sings The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring and Conversations with Smaug is written and read by JRR Tolkien on this wonderful cassette. Now you can own some of his most wonderful tales as told by the author himself! Includes wonderful artwork showing Conversations with Smaug. From the back cover of the original LP: This record is based on a tape recording that J.R.R. Tolkien made when he was staying in my house in Malvern, Worcestershire. It was in August, 1952. For the whole of that summer he had been depressed because THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the book on which he had worked for fourteen years, had been refused by publishers, so that he had almost given up hope of ever seeing it in print. But the fact that they had all returned it made it possible for my wife, Moira, and I to borrow the only complete typescript and to become with our friend, CS Lewis, about the first passionately enthusiastic Tolkien fans. There arose the question of how to return it to its author. Since it could not of course be entrusted to the post, I wrote to ask when he would be at home in Oxford for me to deliver it. His reply indicated that he would be quite on his own in the second half of August and perhaps even rather lonely. We therefore invited him to come to Malvern to pick up the typescript and to stay for a few days.

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JRR Tolkien Reads and Sings The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring Conversations with Smaug

Cassette: VG+ and plays great
Box: VG+ with minor shelf/edge wear and soiling

Album Tracks:
The Hobbit (Abridged) (Chapter 5, Riddles in the Dark)
The Fellowship Of The Ring (Abridged) (Book One Chapter 3: Three is Company)
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It was easy to entertain him by day. He and I tramped the Malvern Hills which he had often seen during his boyhood in Birmingham or from his brother's house on the other side of the Severn River valley. He lived the book as we walked, sometimes comparing parts of the hills with, for instance, the White Mountains of Gondor. We drove to the Black Mountains on the borders of Wales, picked bilberries and climbed through the heather there. We picnicked on bread and cheese and apples, and washed them down with perry, beer, or cider. When we saw signs of industrial pollution, he talked of orcs and orcery. At home he helped me to garden. Characteristically what he liked most was to cultivate a very small area, say a square yard, extremely well.

To entertain him in the evening I produced a tape recorder (a solid early Ferrograph that is still going strong). He had never seen one before and said whimsically that he ought to cast out any devil that might be in it by recording a prayer, the Lord's Prayer in Gothic, one of the extinct languages of which he was a master. He was delighted when I played it back to him and asked if he might record some of the poems in THE LORD OF THE RINGS to find out how they sounded to other people. The more he recorded, the more he enjoyed recording and the more his literary self-confidence grew. When he had finished the poems, one of us said: “Record for us the riddle scene from THE HOBBIT, and we sat spellbound for almost half an hour while he did. I then asked him to record what he thought one of the best pieces of prose in THE LORD OF THE RINGS and he recorded part of The Ride of the Rohirrim. "Surely you know that's really good?” I asked after playing it back. “Yes,” he said, "it's good. This machine has made me believe in it again, but how am I to get it published?”

I thought of what I myself might do in the same difficulty. “Haven't you an old pupil in publishing who might like it for its own sake and therefore be willing to take the risk?” “There's only Rayner Unwin,” he replied after a pause. “Then send it to Rayner Unwin personally.”
And he did.
And the result was that even during his lifetime over three million copies were sold. When he got back to Oxford, Tolkien wrote to thank us for having him, a letter in Elvish that is one of my most valued possessions.

The whole of the first side of this record is devoted to the author's reading of the Riddle Scene from THE HOBBIT. THE HOBBIT is an example of a family children's story in the oral tradition, invented by Tolkien to read aloud to his own four children and only after it was known to be a success with them written down for the benefit of the rest of the world. Published first in 1937, it has been translated into many languages and achieved immense popularity. The author reads his own work incomparably well. Although it is full of humour he never condescends or adopts that special voice that falsifies much reading for children. The characterization is subtle as well as sure - thus Gollum is made pathetic as well as villainous. The riddle contest is an idea from folk-lore, with behind it the strength of a long tradition, but it is treated in an entirely fresh and individual way. Although the pace is admirably brisk, the author gives himself time for the imitative sound effects that delight children and grown-ups too.

The second side of the record consists of poems and prose from volume 1 of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. They display the inventiveness and imaginative variety characteristic of the work. “One ring to rule them all” is an evocative statement of a basic theme, the corrupting influence of power. Snow-white and the other Elvish poems take us into a world of intense but sorrowful beauty. The most difficult thing in imaginative writing is to produce creatures that are delightful and convincing as well as very good. Tolkien has succeeded. He succeeded too in poems of a quite different sort, in the popular and lighthearted: "Sing hey! for the bath at break of day” and in the amusing and fantastic: “There is an inn...".

The side also includes the author singing "Troll sat alone" rather freely set to an old English folk-tune called The Fox and Hens. He no doubt liad it in his head when he composed the words, for the two blend admirably. Some of the strength of his work comes from its folk quality or earthiness. It was in his blood: his brother spent his life tilling the soil in the vale of Evesham, and he himself was happy to garden. - GEORGE SAYER

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