A recently discovered map of Middle Earth annotated by J.R.R. Tolkien reveals The Lord of the Rings author’s observation that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford, England, and implies that the Italian city of Ravenna could be the inspiration behind the fictional city of Minas Tirith.
The map was found loose in a copy of the acclaimed illustrator Pauline Baynes’ copy of The Lord of the Rings. Baynes had removed the map from another edition of the novel as she began work on her own color map of Middle Earth, which would go on to be published by Allen & Unwin in 1970. Tolkien himself had then copiously annotated it in green ink and pencil, with Baynes adding her own notes to the document while she worked.
Blackwell’s Rare Books, which is currently exhibiting the map in Oxford and selling it for £60,000 (US$91,884), called it “an important document, and perhaps the finest piece of Tolkien ephemera to emerge in the last 20 years at least.”
It shows what Blackwell’s called “the exacting nature” of Tolkien’s creative vision: He corrects place names, provides extra ones and gives Baynes a host of suggestions about the map’s various flora and fauna.
Hobbiton, Tolkien noted, “is assumed to be approx at latitude of Oxford”; Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.
The novelist also uses Belgrade, Cyprus and Jerusalem as other reference points, and according to Blackwell’s suggests that “the city of Ravenna is the inspiration behind Minas Tirith — a key location in the third book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.”
“The map shows how completely obsessed he was with the details. Anyone else interfered at their peril,” Blackwell’s Sian Wainwright said. “He was tricky to work with, but very rewarding in the end.”
Letters between Tolkien and Baynes, who also worked on books for C.S. Lewis, as well as Baynes’ unpublished diary entries, gives further details about the sometimes thorny relationship between the two.
On Aug. 21, 1969, Baynes describes a visit to Tolkien and his wife in Bournemouth, England, “to chat about a poster map I have to do — he very uncooperative.”
The author later apologizes for having “been so dilatory,” and a later lunch sees the author “in great form — first names and kissing all round — and pleased with the map.”
Blackwell’s modern first editions specialist Henry Gott said the map was “an exciting and important discovery: new to scholarship [although its existence is implied by correspondence between the two], it demonstrates the care exercised by both in their mapping of Tolkien’s creative vision.”
“Before going on display in the shop this week, this had only ever been in private hands [Baynes’ for the majority of its existence]. One of the points of interest is how much of a hand Tolkien had in the poster map; all of his suggestions, and there are many [the majority of the annotations on the map are his], are reflected in Baynes’ version,” Gott said.
“The degree to which it is properly collaborative was not previously apparent, and couldn’t be without a document like this. Its importance is mostly to do with the insight it gives into that process,” Gott added.
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