Jrr Tolkien reads the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and other works

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Playlist

If you wanted to hear the voice of your favorite writer in the nineteen -six years – a period before audio books, not to mention the podcasts – you have consulted the catalog of Caedmon Records. This label specializes in the LPS of literary eminences reading their own work. This may or may not be the type of business in which you expect to find a High Fantasy writer like Jrr Tolkien. But in 1967, just like The Lord of the Rings benefited from an explosion of popularity focused on the counter-culture, the label released the album Middle -earth poems and songsthat you can taste above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Playlist

" target="_blank" rel="sponsored noopener nofollow">

Tolkien's voice had been placed on a commercial record only once before, in 1930, years before its publication The Hobbit. It was for a series of English lessons by Arthur Lloyd James, the unhappy phonetician who launched pronunciation standards in broadcasting. Tolkien had already established himself in Oxford as a philologist, which could have something to do with his selection to participate in such a project.

Not that Tolkien himself looked like the advertiser of the ideal BBC, but then, the vast readership he would later accumulate with his novels would not have wanted him to do it – and indeed, they would particularly form the recordings that he would not do at all in English, but in Quenya and Sindarin, two, two Elvish languages of his own invention. The second side of the album is taken up by The road never continuesA song cycle adapted from Tolkien's poems on Middle -earth by the composer and prolific interpreter Donald Swann.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Playlist

" target="_blank" rel="sponsored noopener nofollow">

Later, in the 1970s, the label now disappeared would bring together the material for two other versions featuring the author's voice and the voice of the author, one with selections of The Hobbit and the Ring Stock Exchange And another with selections Since The two laps and the return of the king. At that time, there was an important and receptive market for such a product. “I guess most people who buy this file will have already read the tetralogy of Professor Tolkien,” says the line note for Middle -earth poems and songsDescribing this tetralogy as “a work that will seize you completely or leave you cold, and, whatever your answer, nothing and no one will ever change it.” The writer adds that: “As a member of the Enchanted Party, I found from experience that it is quite useless to chat with the non -converted.” His name: Wh Auden.

Related content:

Jrr Tolkien, using a tape recorder for the first time, reads The Hobbit for 30 minutes (1952)

Jrr Tolkien writes and speaks to Elvish, a language he invented for the Lord of the Rings

Hear jrr tolkien read from The Lord of the Rings And The Hobbit in vintage recordings from the early 1950s

When Jrr Tolkien worked for the English dictionary of Oxford and “learned more … than any other equal period of my life” (1919-1920)

110 drawings and paintings by Jrr Tolkien: Middle-earth and beyond

Jrr tolkien in his own words

Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.