(U-WIRE) MILWAUKEE — In a hole in the library there lives a hobbit. Actually, it’s more than a hole, it’s an entire section of the Marquette University Archives, and there is more than just one hobbit. The archives hold the entire original manuscripts for J.R.R. Tolkien’s books “The Hobbit,” “The Lord of the Rings” as well as the manuscripts for some of his lesser-known works.
Also in the archives are hundreds of secondary sources, original printings, re-printings, fanzines, articles and trinkets (from cardboard cutouts of an illustrated Gandalf the Gray to mugs with a drawings of a Tolkien with hairy hobbit-like feet to T-shirts with Elijah Wood’s face on them).
In short, if it has anything to do with Middle Earth, the university archives have it.
But why? Fantasy novels as a genre are considered second-rung literature by many English departments, as are popular novels. Why would Marquette pour thousands of dollars into a collection of pulp fiction?
The simple answer: they could get it.
According to Matt Blessing, head archivist at the Memorial Library, in the mid-1950s Marquette decided it wanted to develop a collection of literary documents and original sources that would help define the university as a center for research. The librarian that was hired to do this was William B. Ready.
“They expressly told him that they wanted him to identify and go out and get a research collection,” Blessing said.
Ready was considering many different fields in which Marquette could develop a niche, but when he read “The Lord of the Rings,” he found it.
“According to Ready in his memoirs, he read the book in a single evening, all 500,000 words,” Blessing said.
Ready was born in Wales and had connections with collectors in London who were able to contact Tolkien and discover that no academic institution had tried to obtain the original manuscripts yet.
“We don’t know why he chose Marquette,” Blessing said.
“But it’s probably good sense that Marquette was the first to ask.”
“I think that Tolkien was very pleased that anyone in academia was interested,” said Mike Foster, Marquette alumnus and North American representative for the International Tolkien Society.
Tolkien received 1,500 pounds for his manuscripts, which was equivalent to $4,800 in 1956 and, considering inflation, equals approximately $35,000 now.
“So it was a considerable investment,” Blessing said. “But in hindsight it was a bargain.”
Included with the manuscripts were original drawing, maps, language charts (Tolkien invented complete unique languages for many of the creatures he created) and rejected drafts, such as an unpublished epilogue).
“It’s certainly served its objectives as far as helping to define some of the resources we have at the Marquette Library,” Blessing said.
The Tolkien collection has brought many scholars to Marquette. And some of them, like Foster, who teaches a course in Tolkien at Illinois Central College in Peoria, Ill., regularly make trips up to look at the collection and bring more and more people to Marquette to love the books.
“Without hyping it too much, when you consider what Marquette has, it’s really a remarkable resource,” Foster said. “It really has drawn some people to Marquette.”
John Rateliff, who is working on a book about the writing of “The Hobbit,” titled “Mr. Baggins,” came to Marquette solely because of the Tolkien collection.
“The only thing I knew about Marquette was that they had the Tolkien papers,” Rateliff said. “I really do encourage people to go on in and look sometime. A lot of people don’t realize we have a prize like that in the library.”
