Another one bites the dust....

[William Cloud Hicklin]

What I recall is that the estate wanted the book banned, and all copies destroyed. The book is still on sale.

Not so. All the Estate wanted was the opportunity to review the book prior to approval, and acknowledgement of its intellectual property interest. They got both.

The sanctions you list are just the statutory fate of any infringing work., and the compliance threat-hammer

[Lalwendë]

It all reminds me so much of the pressure put on biographers and critics of Sylvia Plath by Ted Hughes and his sister Olwen. Works were banned. Academics were threatened. The fur flew. Because he 'owned' her copyright, and of course some would write some quite damning stuff about him.

Bethberry makes a very good point that to throw writs about with such abandon potentially severely restricts scholarship. Yes, some of it may be negative towards Tolkien and where it touches on biographical detail it may also worry the remaining family, but I wonder how much 'truth' we will ever get at.

The Estate are of course free to deny access to quotes. I recently worked with a certain someone who carried out an important Government review and I had to go and seek permission from everyone she wished to quote. That's to be expected and Grotta shouldn't be surprised at this - he was lucky to get that loophole in the first place. But the article seems to hint at more sinister goings on:

What’s more, he informed me that none of Tolkien’s personal and academic associates would give me even the time of day. Indeed, as I later discovered while in Oxford, most of Tolkien’s close associates had been specifically asked by Christopher Tolkien not to talk to me. Fortunately, enough of his old friends thought that was contrary to their sense of academic freedom and openness, and agreed to be interviewed at length.

Why?

To protect artistic integrity? No, because this was biography so there were no characters to be protected. To protect the family? What might they have to hide? Best not to go into that one, maybe. Or to protect the new 'product' i.e. the new authorised biography? I've read my fair share of unauthorised biogs of bands and singers - all of them get published regardless. The Plath biographies have also been published regardless (complete with snippy comments directed towards her 'estate'). Or is it because the biography is a bit pants? I don't think they're that bothered about a low quality bio - the official one isn't that great.

It is an important question - why?

As for trademarking various words...I can only say this...LOL...there must be tens of thousands of businesses using those words, some have been using them for years. They've even casually named a human sub-species after Hobbits. It's a huge compliment to Tolkien's legacy and enduring popularity that everything from vegan food delivery firms to fossilised ancient humans have been named after his works.

I'm waiting for whoever is buying new Mercedes from all of this suing (I don't think it's CT, he has other things to worry about) to have a go at The Middle-earth Tavern in Whitby, whereupon they will be told to beat it, and informed that Middle-earth was invented by one Caedmon, Northumbrian poet resident at Whitby Abbey in the 7th century

[Mithalwen]

Easy for the bitter to put a sinister slant on things. Was the grotty bio really scholarly or jusr cashing in? Did they really put the hard word out or was it a case of letting people know which was the authorised bio?

As for the more recent works, publishing an extract from one of Christopher's letters without acknowledgement, let alone permission, is probably not the way to get cooperation for future projects...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Easy for the bitter to put a sinister slant on things. Was the grotty bio really scholarly or jusr cashing in? Did they really put the hard word out or was it a case of letting people know which was the authorised bio?

As for the more recent works, publishing an extract from one of Christopher's letters without acknowledgement, let alone permission, is probably not the way to get cooperation for future projects...

There's only one way to find out - read the Grotta book! I don't know if we've got it somewhere in our book piles, but if we do then I'm going to read it and find out for myself

As I say, there was a very similar firestorm over the Plath estate and the unauthorised biographies turned out to be absolutely the best, despite having to be published without quotes (easy enough to pinpoint them, when I was a student with a special interest in 20th C poetry in any case). I will have to dig out the piece I wrote back at Uni which looked at how the critic benefits from different sources and whether anything authorised can be considered a 'primary' source - it was based on the Plath/Hughes Estate wrangle. But the basic gist was that authorised biographies are actually quite limiting to those wishing to study works with reference to biographical as well as textual detail. What you get from them is in effect a 'fiction' of the writer's life, and they are never objective. Just as much as an unauthorised bio can have an agenda, so does an authorised one. The only way you can really get close to an objective assessment is to have a range of bios at hand.

If it's CT Himself putting the brakes on then he is in effect acting as gatekeeper to all subsequent scholarly work, whether formal or informal. He has a right to do this but is it right?

[Mithalwen]

It does have bad reviews and I am a bit dubious since they claim a NEW BOOK book is being prevented when it is merely a reprint. And no doubt a lot of the people concerned are now dead and can't say. I don't thing genuine scholarship will be affected as the law makes provision for that. Prurient curiosity is another thing.. The Bodleian holds an archive and while Tolkien's manuscriptscare open to scholars the family papers are not. Now that suggests to me they may be made available either to some or in the future. It may well be that the next generation at that degree of remove will see things as historical curiosity rather than intensely personal.
Donating family papers to one of the world's foremost libraries is not exactly losing them to the world.

Publishing the private letters of the living without consent is essentially no different to phone hacking and we have seen the trouble that gets people into...

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

The Bodleian holds an archive and while Tolkien's manuscriptscare open to scholars the family papers are not.

Actually, that is not true. At RotR during a session on how to undertake research on Tolkien, we were told that no one, not even scholars with full accreditation to a university, are allowed to see the manuscripts for The Silm and HoMe. For other works, scholars must apply not to the Bodleian but to the Estate. Verlyn Fleiger had to get CT's approval, not the library's, to undertake her edition of SWM.

Since you were not at Oxonmoot, Mithalwen, where do you get your information about what was in the Hilary biography?

[Mithalwen]

I was going by the bodleian websie. As for the book I was told and checked independently. Why should I need to go to Oxonmoot to learn about the contents of a published book?

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Actually, that is not true. At RotR during a session on how to undertake research on Tolkien, we were told that no one, not even scholars with full accreditation to a university, are allowed to see the manuscripts for The Silm and HoMe. For other works, scholars must apply not to the Bodleian but to the Estate. Verlyn Fleiger had to get CT's approval, not the library's, to undertake her edition of SWM.

Many of the manuscripts and typescripts for Tolkien's Silmarillion are included in HME of course, so I assume you mean that nothing of the original documents of anything within these twelve volumes (including the drafts for The Lord of the Rings), are available to anyone.

Not even as copies (noting WCH's comments about Marquette)?

Is Christopher Tolkien's personal history of the Silmarillion at the Bodleian Library? Sorry for the side topic, but just wondering.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Why?

To protect artistic integrity? No, because this was biography so there were no characters to be protected. To protect the family? What might they have to hide? Best not to go into that one, maybe. Or to protect the new 'product' i.e. the new authorised biography? I've read my fair share of unauthorised biogs of bands and singers - all of them get published regardless. The Plath biographies have also been published regardless (complete with snippy comments directed towards her 'estate'). Or is it because the biography is a bit pants? I don't think they're that bothered about a low quality bio - the official one isn't that great.

It is an important question - why?

Why? Perhaps because G-K had demonstrated himself to be an arrogant sh!thead? I do think there is a bit of slumbering dragon in the son and executor who once called David Day "more like a burglar than a writer"