Thursday, July 10, 2008

Letters to Middle Earth

Builder discovers priceless Tolkien postcard:
A demolition man stripping a fireplace from the former home of "The Lord of the Rings" author J.R.R. Tolkien stumbled across a postcard to the writer dated 1968, and hopes to sell it for a small fortune.

Stephen Malton, who runs Prodem Demolition in Bournemouth on the south English coast, was working in the house in the nearby town of Poole before it was bulldozed to make way for a new construction project.

"Before we demolish a house we do an internal strip out," Malton said Tuesday.

"One of the main features was a fireplace, and upon removing that we came across three postcards. The third one was a postcard dated 1968 and addressed to J.R.R. Tolkien."

Malton said research on the Internet suggested that the carved wooden fireplace with marble inlay, a feature of the house when Tolkien lived there from 1968 to 1972, was already worth up to $250,000.

"To tie in both the fireplace and the postcard, we are talking about a price of around $500,000 for the combined pair," the 42-year-old told Reuters by telephone.
This paragraph has the ring of stupidity:
Tolkien had achieved fame by the time he moved to Poole in 1968. His epic "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, already popular before the hugely successful film adaptations appeared, was published in 1954-55.
Yeah, by...oh...several decades.

They think the postcard might have been sent by Lin Carter.

1 comment:

  1. When reading media reports regarding subjects I hold dear, it's not uncommon for the news to get it wrong nearly all the time.

    I would imagine that articles reporting on matters of which I'm ignorant are just as faulty.

    Reporters and editors are stupid, sloppy, malicious or all of the above.

    ReplyDelete