I had great difficulty (it took several years) to get my story published, and it is not easy to say who is most surprised at the result : myself or the publishers! But it remains an unfailing delight to me to find my own belief justified: that the ‘fairy-story’ is really an adult genre, and one for which a starving audience exists. I said so, more or less, in my essay on the fairy-story in the collection dedicated to the memory of Charles Williams. But it was a mere proposition – which awaited proof. As C. S. Lewis said to me long ago, more or less – (I do not suppose my memory of his dicta is any more precisely accurate than his of mine: I often find strange things attributed to me in his works) – ‘if they won’t write the kind of books we want to read, we shall have to write them ourselves; but it is very laborious’. Being a man of immense power and industry, his ‘trilogy’ was finished much sooner amidst much other work; but at last my slower and more meticulous (as well as more indolent and less organized) machine has produced its effort. The labour! I have typed myself nearly all of it twice, and pans more often; not to mention the written stages ! But I am amply rewarded and encouraged to find that the labour was not wasted. One such letter as yours is sufficient – and ‘furnishes more than any author ought to ask’.
J.R.R. Tolkien in a letter to Dora Marshall (March 3rd, 1955)
(via sallymolly)
