MR Bliss - Hardcover

J.R.R. Tolkien

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000743619X ISBN 13: 9780007436194

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011

Synopsis

Professor J.R.R. Tolkien invented and illustrated the book of Mr Bliss's adventures for his own children when they were very young. The book was handwritten with lots of detailed and uproarious colour pictures.This is a highly imaginative tale of complete eccentricity. Mr Bliss, a man notable for his immensely tall hats and for the girabbit in his garden, makes the whimsical decision to buy a motor car. But his first drive to visit friends quickly becomes a catalogue of disasters. Some of these could be blamed on Mr Bliss's style of driving, but even he could not anticipate being hijacked by three bears. As for what happened next - the readers, whether young or old, will want to discover for themselves.Redesigned using new archival scans of Tolkien's original drawings, MR BLISS is presented for the first time in a conventional trade format, sure to delight Tolkien fans of all ages.

About this title

About the Author:

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on the 3rd January, 1892 at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, but at the age of four he and his brother were taken back to England by their mother. After his father's death the family moved to Sarehole, on the south-eastern edge of Birmingham. Tolkien spent a happy childhood in the countryside and his sensibility to the rural landscape can clearly be seen in his writing and his pictures.His mother died when he was only twelve and both he and his brother were made wards of the local priest and sent to King Edward's School, Birmingham, where Tolkien shone in his classical work. After completing a First in English Language and Literature at Oxford, Tolkien married Edith Bratt. He was also commissioned in the Lancashire Fusiliers and fought in the battle of the Somme. After the war, he obtained a post on the New English Dictionary and began to write the mythological and legendary cycle which he originally called The Book of Lost Tales but which eventually became known as The Silmarillion.In 1920 Tolkien was appointed Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds which was the beginning of a distinguished academic career culminating with his election as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. Meanwhile Tolkien wrote for his children and told them the story of The Hobbit. It was his publisher, Stanley Unwin, who asked for a sequel to The Hobbit and gradually Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, a huge story that took twelve years to complete and which was not published until Tolkien was approaching retirement. After retirement Tolkien and his wife lived near Oxford, but then moved to Bournemouth. Tolkien returned to Oxford after his wife's death in 1971. He died on 2 September 1973 leaving The Silmarillion to be edited for publication by his son, Christopher.

Review:

`Owes a little to Beatrix Potter in its ironical humour and to Edward Lear in the style of its drawings, though Tolkien's approach is less grotesque and more delicate than Lear's.' Humphrey Carpenter `A celebration, in the spirit of The Wind in the Willows, of a vanished, vulgar England where everybody did - and spoke - exactly as he pleased, and life was consequently a series of amiable abrupt collisions, feebly refereed by the police in the shape of Sergeant Boffin. Although the book ought to feel dated, ... dating has done little harm to Tom Kitten or Mr Badger, and there seems no reason why it should here.' Tom. Shippey, Times Literary Supplement

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 000743619X
• ISBN 13: 9780007436194
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144