Lewis & Tolkien: Together Again

So one Steven A. Beebe, professor of communications at Texas State University–San Marcos, was rummaging through C.S. Lewis’ original manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, when he came across a fragment . Not just any tidbit or afterthought but what the good professor came to believe was the beginnings of a work to be co-written by the Lord of the Rings himself, J.R.R. Tolkien.

I was interested in what I could learn about Lewis by reading his original, handwritten manuscripts. I was specifically looking for things such as what he may have crossed out, or what I could learn by observing his editing of his own work. At the beginning of a little orange-covered notebook I read the words, “In a book like this it might be expected that we should begin with the origins of language . . . ” and realized that I was reading a book manuscript about language. As a professor of communication, I knew immediately that his ideas about language and communication were important. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that this was to have been the beginning of a collaborative book with J. R. R. Tolkien. That took another seven years for me to figure out—that the manuscript I was reading was supposed to be a collaboration between Lewis and Tolkien.

The book was never finished, nor published, although odd references to it appear here and there. I have to admit that a book about language, even from the dynamic duo, sounds depressingly dull, except of course to the expert in the field or the most ardent fan, for whom a copy of their dental records would prove exciting. If these gentlemen were going to collaborate, why couldn’t they do it on something more compelling, like a spy novel or a work of anti-modernist polemics or a travel guide—you, know, Best Student Hostels in Narnia or Negotiating the Tube in Middle Earth , something like that . . .