Tolkien’s magical letters and illustrations bring Father Christmas to life
Handwritten illustrated letters from Father Christmas written by the author JRR Tolkien to his four children give a touching insight into Tolkien's personal family life. The illustrated letters are to go on show at a major new exhibition opening at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries in 2018 (1 June to 28 October). Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth will explore the full breadth of Tolkien's unique literary imagination from his creation of Middle-earth, the imagined world where The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and his other works are set, to his life and work as an artist, poet, medievalist and scholar of languages. When Tolkien's three-year old son, John, asked who Father Christmas was, and where he lived, Tolkien wrote a reply from Father Christmas, starting a tradition that would continue for the next twenty-three years. Every Christmas Eve, from 1920 to 1943 when his youngest child Priscilla was fourteen, Tolkien would sit in his study and write a letter to his children from Father Christmas, accompanying them with beautiful illustrations. Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien Archivist at the Bodleian Libraries and curator of the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition said: 'The Father Christmas letters are some of my favourite items in the exhibition. 'The letters were delivered by the postman, who'd been persuaded by Tolkien to deliver them with the rest of the post, or arrived on the hearth with specially made stamps from the North Pole, marked with the cost of postage '2 kisses'.
