Letter to Ronald Ashton

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Ronald Ashton 12 March 1927.jpg

On 12 March 1927, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a letter to Ronald Ashton (a former student at the University of Leeds).[1]

Transcription[edit | edit source]

[First page (in part):]

Neither of us were ever under the delusion that Oxford = Paradise: we know it too well. There are still lingering vestiges of civilisation in Oxford of course, a civilization [sic] that for historical reasons did not reach the North before it was overwhelmed by the new barbarism - but it is still part of modern England (and a centre of the motor industry: that fantastic lunacy).

[Second page:]

As for myself I find much that makes me regret Leeds very much. I doubt very much whether I should ever have torn myself away if I had been a single man, and able to disregard small differences in salary. The English School here is a battle-ground and there is small peace and little sense in it.
I hope when you have dreed your unhappy weird in the Ed. Dept. — glorious product of half-baked pseudo-science — that you will get a job of a tolerable sort. Your qualifications are good enough anyhow. I hope you are [?well] and [?flourishing]. Please remember me kindly ??? ??? Mr. Ashton.

[?Sincerely]

JRR Tolkien

See also[edit | edit source]

References