Wayne Hammond

Dec 1, 2024 | literaryreview.co.uk | Christina Scull |Wayne Hammond

One piece of Tolkien lore that last year’s expanded edition of The Letters of J R R Tolkien made abundantly clearwas quite how highly the author regarded himself as a poet. In 1916, aged twenty-four, he wrote to his fiancée Edith Bratt urging the merits of a bundle of poems dispatched to the firm of Sidgwick & Jackson: ‘Do pray about it darling – it means a lot to me.’ The collection, entitled ‘The Trumpets of Fairie’, was turned down.