Brandon Sanderson isn’t just the author of The Cosmere universe, he’s also a well-known Tolkien expert. He delivered the annual Tolkien lecture at Oxford this year, which you can watch the entire recording for directly from the Oxford website.
Sanderson revealed a rather interesting Tolkien tidbit he discovered at Oxford during his weekly podcast this week. He said he encountered an illustration of Helm’s Deep he’d never seen before, and it just so happened to be in a rather unlikely place.
“The sketch of Helm’s Deep is on the back of a student paper. He was grading papers over the summer, and during that time, you didn’t get your paper back,” said Sanderson. “And so there was space on the back of this paper, and you can see the student’s writing takes up half the page and then ends. And [Tolkien] is like, well, ‘Shame to waste this paper,’ and he did a sketch of Helm’s Deep as he was trying to figure out where things were.”
For those who aren’t already familiar with Tolkien’s life before becoming the author of The Lord of the Rings, it’s worth noting that he was a teacher before he was a writer. He first became a professor at Oxford in 1925 with a fellowship at Pembroke College. It was during this time that he wrote The Hobbit and the first two books in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Hobbit wasn’t officially published until much later in 1937.
Tolkien is pretty widely considered a founding father of the fantasy genre, but it’s easy to forget that he wasn’t always a literary icon. He took years to develop Middle-earth and all of the little details within it. There are tons of examples of him taking notes and doing sketches wherever he could to create the sprawling universe we know and love today.
If you want a first-hand look at some of Tolkien’s key drawings and illustrations without having to visit Oxford, you can pick up a copy of The Lord of the Rings illustrated editions. There’s the standard special edition and the deluxe illustrated editions available for The Hobbit, LotR, and The Silmarillion currently available.
Jacob Kienlen is a Senior Audience Development Strategist and Writer for IGN. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, he has considered the Northwest his home for his entire life. With a bachelor’s degree in communication and 10 years of professional writing experience, his expertise is spread across a variety of different pop culture topics — from TV series to books and the latest Pokémon games.
