The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is a selection of J. R. R. Tolkien's letters published in 1981, edited by Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter assisted by Christopher Tolkien. The selection contains 354 letters, dating between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Oxford, and 29 August 1973, four days before his death. The letters can be roughly divided in four categories: The last category is especially of interest to Tolkien fans, as it provides a lot of information about Middle-earth which cannot be found anywhere in the works published by Tolkien
The House of the Wolfings "The House of the Wolfings" was one of the influences on J. R. R. Tolkien's popular "The Lord of the Rings". In a December 31, 1960 letter published in "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien", (p. 303), Tolkien wrote: 'The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in "The House of the Wolfings" or "The Roots of the Mountains"." Among the numerous parallels with "The Lord of the Rings", Morris has Old English-style placenames such