JChill1001
Leaf by Niggle
When, in the early 1940s, Tolkien wrote his partly-autobiographical tale of a painter so obsessed with detail he was unable to complete the canvas he was working on, he was 'dead stuck, somewhere about Ch. 10 (Voice of Saruman) in Book III' of The Lord of the Rings (Letters, p.321). The story expresses something of Tolkien's anxiety that his own 'internal Tree' (p.321), The Lord of the Rings, would be 'finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be "not at all"' (p.257). 'Leaf by Niggle' was published in the Dublin Review in January 1945. Two months later, Tolkien wrote to Stanley Unwin that it was 'the only thing I have ever done which cost me absolutely no pains at all… Ot took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out' (Letters, p.113). The deleted title in the fair copy of the manuscript exhibited here shows that the story was originally called 'The Tree.' It was republished in Tree and Leaf (1964).
Leaf by Niggle
When, in the early 1940s, Tolkien wrote his partly-autobiographical tale of a painter so obsessed with detail he was unable to complete the canvas he was working on, he was 'dead stuck, somewhere about Ch. 10 (Voice of Saruman) in Book III' of The Lord of the Rings (Letters, p.321). The story expresses something of Tolkien's anxiety that his own 'internal Tree' (p.321), The Lord of the Rings, would be 'finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be "not at all"' (p.257). 'Leaf by Niggle' was published in the Dublin Review in January 1945. Two months later, Tolkien wrote to Stanley Unwin that it was 'the only thing I have ever done which cost me absolutely no pains at all… Ot took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out' (Letters, p.113). The deleted title in the fair copy of the manuscript exhibited here shows that the story was originally called 'The Tree.' It was republished in Tree and Leaf (1964).