J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have been enormously influential for millions of fans around the world for decades. Marquette University, home to the J.R.R. Tolkien archives, is looking to build a catalog of oral histories about the late author’s influence from fans of his work.
Archivist William Fliss launched the J.R.R. Tolkien Fandom Oral History Collection (h/t to LitHub for spotting it), with the goal of collecting 6000 interviews (one for each of the Riders of Rohan) from fans about how they first encountered Tolkien’s works, and what his stories means to fans. The overall goal of the project is to document the state of Tolkien fandom, from casual fans to academics. And if you’re a Tolkien fan, you can contribute!
Fans who sign up for an interview appointment will be asked three questions, and will have three minutes to answer them:
- When did you first encounter the works of J. R. R. Tolkien?
- Why are you a Tolkien fan?
- What has he meant to you?
Already, Fliss has collected nearly 500 interviews dating back to 2017, all of which you can listen to on the university’s site, and they make for some interesting listening: individual stories from folks of all ages and locations about how they encountered Tolkien’s stories, and what they meant to them.
The effort looks to be a fascinating and important initiative, one that will provide researchers, writers, and fans with some extremely detailed accounts of the participants’ fandom and passion for Middle-earth. Given the enduring popularity of Tolkien’s books, its associated adaptations, spinoffs, and influenced works, it’s a topic that will certainly merit study well down the road.
I’ve already signed up for an interview for this!
Shortly after starting as an undergrad at Marquette University (1981/82), I heard that Tolkien’s manuscripts and notes were housed in the (then) Memorial Library. Initially I thought I was hearing an urban legend or joke, given Marquette is 4,000 miles from Oxford. Just a few weeks later, however, I was in the archive in the library basement gazing firsthand at Tolkien’s original pages for The Hobbit. In those days, an 18-year-old student could walk into the archives, make a selection from the archive catalog (typed on paper), and minutes later find themselves sitting at a table with an archivist and some of Tolkien’s writings.
My most prominent memory from that time was examining a draft of “Riddles in the Dark” from The Hobbit, and seeing Tolkien’s edits and margin notes that helped to shape the final work.
I am pleased to learn that Marquette is collecting an oral history of how fans discovered (and were impacted by) Tolkien’s works.
The Marquette Archive Project has been on-going since mid-2017, and the international Tolkien following have been contributing to it since 2018, when Bill came to Europe for the – then – singular exhibition of Tolkien artefacts at the Bodleian Library in Tolkien’s Oxford.
Prior to the pandemic, people were able to travel to contribute, but since the suspension of travel it has been necessary for folks to contributed in an e-functionality. I am thrilled that Mr Fliss has responded to the international population by accepting the 3-minute audio files in any language, as long as a full transcript in English is also supplied with the audio recording.
This greatly expands the opportunity to contribute and should be publicised in this article. Perhaps an update would suffice?
Now I want to know how the archives wound up there.
Marquette bought the beginnings of the collection from Tolkien in 1956: I don’t want to include a link because I don’t want to get sent to spam, but google “Tolkien archives Marquette” and when you get to the Tolkien collection homepage click on “About.” The Marquette page is clearer than this article that there is also a significant collection of Tolkien’s papers at the Bodleian, including all his personal papers.