XPost: alt.books.inklings, rec.arts.books.tolkien, rec.arts.books   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   Tolkien's annotated map of Middle-earth discovered inside copy of Lord   
   of the Rings   
      
   Map goes on sale in Oxford for £60,000 after being found at   
   Blackwell’s Rare Books inside novel belonging to illustrator Pauline   
   Baynes   
      
   Alison Flood   
      
   Friday 23 October 2015 13.48 BST   
   Last modified on Friday 23 October 2015 18.19 BST   
      
   A recently discovered map of Middle-earth annotated by JRR Tolkien   
   reveals The Lord of the Rings author’s observation that Hobbiton is on   
   the same latitude as Oxford, 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 colour Map   
   of Middle-earth for Tolkien, 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, which is currently exhibiting the map in Oxford and   
   selling it for £60,000, 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, he notes, “ is assumed to be approx at latitude of   
   Oxford”; Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.   
   The notebooks reveal that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford,   
   and imply that the Italian city of Ravenna could be the inspiration   
   behind Minas Tirith.   
      
   The notebooks reveal that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford,   
   and imply that the Italian city of Ravenna could be the inspiration   
   behind Minas Tirith. Photograph: Blackwell’s Rare Books   
      
   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,” said Sian Wainwright at Blackwell’s.   
   “He was tricky to work with, but very rewarding in the end.”   
      
   Correspondence between Tolkien and the late and acclaimed illustrator   
   Baynes, who also worked on books for CS Lewis, as well as Baynes’s   
   unpublished diary entries, gives further details about the sometimes   
   thorny relationship between the two. On 21 August 1969, Baynes   
   describes a visit to Tolkien and his wife in Bournemouth, “to chat   
   about a poster map I have to do – he very uncooperative”.   
      
   The author later apologies 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”.   
      
   Henry Gott, modern first editions specialist at Blackwell’s Rare   
   Books, said the map was “an exciting and important discovery: new to   
   scholarship (though 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 (Pauline Baynes’s 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 annotation on the map is his), are reflected   
   in Baynes’s version,” said Gott. “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.”   
      
   Blackwell’s is selling a range of works by Baynes, who died in 2008,   
   aged 85, including a range of her original signed drawings from the   
   Narnia books.   
      
   https://t.co/q6CcQzwGLf   
      
      
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   Steve Hayes   
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