Tolkien fan letters sell at auction for £103k

Books, letters and notes documenting the friendship between writer JRR Tolkien and a profoundly deaf fan have sold at auction for more than £100,000

Eileen Elgar, who died in 1980, used to live near the Hotel Miramar in Bournemouth where Tolkien and his wife holidayed every year.

Elgar wrote to the Lord of the Rings author, who lived in Oxford, in the 1960s and they began a friendship.

Among the lots, a letter mentioning the death of author CS Lewis and a signed copy of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil sold at Sotheby's auction house in London for £20,480.

Will Passey, a specialist in the books and manuscripts department at Sotheby's, said the "moving" letter served as "a testament to the strength" of their friendship.

"Although we have quite a lot of published letters of Tolkien's, these have been hitherto overlooked."

The items sold at auction for more than double their pre-sale estimates.

The lots, dating from 1961 to 1964, reached a total selling price of £103,680 including seller's premium.

Passey said: "The sale proved that Tolkien is a highly sought-after collecting area right now, with top clients willing to pay a premium for unique items with excellent provenance such as these."

Elgar's grandaughter Helen Dutfield described her as "quite an isolated figure".

She previously explained that the contact with Tolkien came about after Elgar had read some of his books.

"She kept talking to my mother about these amazing books that she was reading and she had lots of questions," Dutfield said.

"My mother, who wasn't interested in them at all, said 'Why don't you write to the author?' - so that's how that started," she said.

As Elgar never learned to lip read, she and Tolkien communicated with notes whenever he visited her home in Bournemouth.