Notable Sales
SMITH OF WOOTTON MAJOR (1967)
TOLKIEN, J.R.R.
First edition. Small octavo. Publisher's original black pictorial boards. Inscribed by Tolkien for John Ezard to a card pasted on the front free endpaper, "John Ezard from J.R.R. Tolkien".
A good copy, rubbed and well read, with splits to the joints.
In 1966 J.R.R. Tolkien granted his first newspaper interview to a journalist. The journalist was John Ezard, a young reporter at the Oxford Mail, and while Ezard wanted Tolkien to weigh in on the controversy over an illicitly produced American edition of The Lord Of The Rings, Tolkien instead wanted to talk about Sarehole, where he had grown up between the ages of four and eight. "It was a kind of lost paradise," he said.
PROVENANCE: John Ezard (1939-2010), longtime journalist for the Guardian, who in his days at the Oxford Mail was the first newspaper journalist to interview Tolkien.