Books Dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien During His Lifetime

I was thinking recently that there have been a small number of books written by Tolkien’s friends that were dedicated to him and published in his lifetime. This is an attempt to cover such publications.

The first is The Saga of Hrolf Kraki (Basil Blackwell, 1932), a translation by Stella M. Mills, who had done the translation under Tolkien and E.V. Gordon at Leeds, before she got her B.A. in 1924. The dust-wrapper cover is striking (the illustration is signed only “P.W.”), though the typesetting gets worse the farther one gets into the text. It is dedicated, with their initials, to Gordon (who contributed an introduction), Tolkien, and C.T. Onions.

The second book is An Edition of Þe Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Iuliene (Liege, 1936). It is the thesis of S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne, put together under Tolkien’s guidance.

In 1963 the book was reprinted by the Early English Text Society with a shortened title, Þe Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Iuliene. The dedication is reproduced below.

The third book is The Screwtape Letters (Geoffrey Bles, 1942) by Tolkien’s close friend C.S. Lewis. The dedication reads simply: “To / J. R. R. Tolkien”

Shortly after Lewis’s death, Tolkien wrote to their mutual friend George Sayer: “But then Jack never sent me anything, Not even of Screwtape Letters which he dedicated to me (without permission). I was wryly amused to learn from the Daily Telegraph that ‘Lewis was never himself very fond of this work’. I [have often?] wondered why the dedication was made. Now I know—or should” (28 November 1963). Contrary to this, Humphrey Carpenter noted in The Inklings that: “Lewis dedicated Screwtape to Tolkien, adding beneath the printed dedication in Tolkien’s own copy, ‘In token payment of a great debt’ (p. 174).

The next book dedicated to Tolkien is The Elder Edda: A Selection, translated from the Icelandic by Peter B. Taylor and W.H. Auden (Faber and Faber, 1969). The dedication reads “For / J.R.R. Tolkien”. A paperback appeared from Faber and Faber in 1973.

The final title dedicated to Tolkien that was published during his lifetime is the one that probably got more distribution than any of the others. It was first published as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Dragons (Hamish Hamilton, 1970), edited by Roger Lancelyn Green. It is a fine oversized anthology with illustrations by Krystyna Turska, and includes Tolkien’s poem “The Hoard,” and C.S. Lewis’s poem “The Dragon Speaks.” It may be the first-ever anthology of dragon literature; at least I don’t know of any earlier. The US edition was made from sheets printed in Great Britain, and retitled A Cavalcade of Dragons (Henry Z. Walck, 1970). A small paperback from Puffin Books was published in 1973 as A Book of Dragons. The dedication, including a short poem by C.S. Lewis dating from the early 1930s, is reproduced below the dust-wrapper of the US edition.

There is one other book by one of Tolkien’s students from the 1930s who became a life-long family friend. This is W. Meredith Thompson, who dedicated his book, Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerd (Early English Text Society, 1958) “To / E.M.T.”, Tolkien’s wife, Edith Mary Tolkien. About six years after publication, Thompson sent a special copy of the book for Edith, who was delighted to have her own copy.

I think the five titles given above are all that were dedicated to Tolkien during his lifetime. Or have I missed any?