Leaf by Niggle
Published for the very first time in its own volume, Tolkien's remarkable tale about a painter whose obsession with detail prevents him from finishing his great work.
Niggle is a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he has so many other things to do. For some time he has been obsessed with one particular canvas - a curious picture of a tree with a vast landscape stretching out behind it. The painting keeps getting bigger and bigger, but Niggle has a journey to make.
In 1939 Tolkien was despairing of ever bringing his great work The Lord of the Rings to a conclusion. One morning he woke up with the story Leaf by Niggle complete in his mind and wrote it down. This poignant story, about an artist on a curious journey, is often seen as an allegory of the writer's own creative process and life.
Published to coincide with a new touring stage production of the story, this is the first time the story has been published in its own volume, enabling readers to savour one of Tolkien's most elegant, haunting and least-known short stories.
FictionClassicsFantasyEpicHistoricalVisionary & Metaphysical
RELEASED2016
PUBLISHERHarperCollins Publishers Limited
LENGTH64
LANGUAGEEN
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. He has regularly been condemned by the Eng. Lit. establishment, with honourable exceptions, but loved by literally millions of readers worldwide. In the 1960s he was taken up by many members of the nascent "counter-culture" largely because of his concern with environmental issues. In 1997 he came top of three British polls, organised respectively by Channel 4 / Waterstone's, the Folio Society, and SFX, the UK's leading science fiction media magazine, amongst discerning readers asked to vote for the greatest book of the 20th century. ([Source][1]) [1]: http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/biography.html
Leaf by Niggle
Published for the very first time in its own volume, Tolkien's remarkable tale about a painter whose obsession with detail prevents him from finishing his great work.
Niggle is a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he has so many other things to do. For some time he has been obsessed with one particular canvas - a curious picture of a tree with a vast landscape stretching out behind it. The painting keeps getting bigger and bigger, but Niggle has a journey to make.
In 1939 Tolkien was despairing of ever bringing his great work The Lord of the Rings to a conclusion. One morning he woke up with the story Leaf by Niggle complete in his mind and wrote it down. This poignant story, about an artist on a curious journey, is often seen as an allegory of the writer's own creative process and life.
Published to coincide with a new touring stage production of the story, this is the first time the story has been published in its own volume, enabling readers to savour one of Tolkien's most elegant, haunting and least-known short stories.
FictionClassicsFantasyEpicHistoricalVisionary & Metaphysical
RELEASED2016
PUBLISHERHarperCollins Publishers Limited
LENGTH64
LANGUAGEEN
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. He has regularly been condemned by the Eng. Lit. establishment, with honourable exceptions, but loved by literally millions of readers worldwide. In the 1960s he was taken up by many members of the nascent "counter-culture" largely because of his concern with environmental issues. In 1997 he came top of three British polls, organised respectively by Channel 4 / Waterstone's, the Folio Society, and SFX, the UK's leading science fiction media magazine, amongst discerning readers asked to vote for the greatest book of the 20th century. ([Source][1]) [1]: http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/biography.html
