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SELIM. Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature. 28 (2023): 97–106.
ISSN: 1132-631X
DOI: 10.17811/selim.28.2023.97-106

© Ediuno. Ediciones de la Universidad de Oviedo.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
International License.

The Missing Letters J. R. R. Tolkien Received from Derek J. Price

and R. M. Wilson: Addendum to “Further Notes on J. R. R.
Tolkien’s Photostats of The Equatorie of the Planetis

(MS Peterhouse 75.I)”

Andoni Cossio
University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) / University of Glasgow

(Received 8 February 2023; revised 23 April 2023)

In 2021, Andoni Cossio suggested cataloguing The Equatorie of the Planetis (MS Peterhouse
75.I, c. 1393) under “Section A” in Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist, by Oronzo Cilli.
One year later, Cossio unearthed the exact list of MS Peterhouse 75.I folios J. R. R. Tolkien
had once owned in the form of photostats (2022). In this second article, Cossio alludes to the
existence of correspondence that Tolkien exchanged with Derek J. Price and R. M. Wilson
during the preparation phase of Price and Wilson’s edition of The Equatorie of the Planetis
(1955). New evidence, gathered from Maggs Bros. Ltd.’s private archive (1991b), as well as
auction (Phillips 1988; Sotheby’s 1995) and sales (Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991a) catalogues,
demonstrates the existence of epistles and other material Tolkien received from Price and
Wilson, though the brief, and often inaccurate, descriptions of the lots and items do not
determine Tolkien’s exact contributions to their edition. However, the catalogues provide
additional information about the timeline of Tolkien’s participation in this project, and
disclose that Price was the one to approach Tolkien in the first place. This note will elucidate
those aspects and complement Cossio’s (2022) article in other ways.1

Keywords: J. R. R. Tolkien; The Equatorie of the Planetis; MS Peterhouse 75.I; Derek J.
Price; R. M. Wilson; C. T. Onions; Geoffrey Chaucer; Merton College; Middle English; Latin

1 I would like to express my gratitude to Wayne G. Hammond, Christina Scull, Dimitra Fimi, and
Julian Reid for their generous assistance. I would also like to thank the Warden and Fellows of
Merton College (Oxford) for granting me permission to reproduce the archival material in the
Appendix. This note was completed under the auspices of a Next Generation EU Margarita Salas
postdoctoral grant (MARSA22/19), financed by the Ministry of Universities (Government of
Spain) and the European Union, and by the research group REWEST (IT-1565-22), funded by the
Basque Government and UPV/EHU.
2 Cilli’s (2019, 1–326) “Section A, Tolkien’s Library, is composed of 2599 items and brings
together the books, works [including manuscripts and pamphlets], and offprints the professor
read, knew of, owned or bought as presents throughout his lifetime” (Cossio 2020, 197). In the
second revised and expanded edition, Cilli has divided the original Section A into “Section A:
Primary Sources” (2023, 1–347) with 2681 items “we know with absolute certainty Tolkien read,
consulted, bought or borrowed” (2023, xxxvi), and “Section B: Secondary Sources” (2023, 348–
84) with 342 items “he read as cited by scholars in some of their works” (2023, xxxvi). The
Equatorie of the Planetis (MS Peterhouse 75.I) is now catalogued as no. A 2540 (Cilli 2023, 328),
and Price and Wilson’s edition of that same work as A 1914 (Cilli 2023, 248).

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2745-5104

ANDONI COSSIO

of MS Peterhouse 75.I folios J. R. R. Tolkien had once owned in the form of photostats
(2022, 168–70).3 In this second article, Cossio alludes to the existence of correspondence
that Tolkien exchanged with Derek J. Price and R. M. Wilson during the preparation
phase of Price and Wilson’s 1955 edition of The Equatorie of the Planetis (2022, 170 and
174). In Cossio’s view, these letters are important because they could reveal:

Tolkien’s contribution to Price and Wilson’s edition of The Equatorie of the Planetis and
his thoughts on the language of the manuscript, as during Tolkien’s lifetime, Price and
Wilson’s claims were never unequivocally disproved and the debate around the
manuscript’s authorship was never settled.4 (2022, 174)

New evidence, gathered from the private archive of Maggs Bros. Ltd. antiquarian
booksellers (1991b) as well as auction (Phillips 1988; Sotheby’s 1995) and sales (Maggs
Bros. Ltd. 1991a) catalogues, demonstrates the existence of epistles and other material
Tolkien received from Price and Wilson, though the brief, and often inaccurate,
descriptions of the lots and items do not determine Tolkien’s exact contributions to their
edition.5 However, the catalogues provide additional information about the timeline of
Tolkien’s participation in the project, and disclose that Price was the one to approach
Tolkien in the first place. This note will elucidate those aspects and complement Cossio’s
(2022) article in other ways. Incidentally, it will also call attention to the worth for
literary research of auction catalogues, sources crammed with nuggets which tend to be
disregarded.

3 Cilli has classified the photostats as no. A 630 (Cilli 2023, 89). John M. Bowers was the first to
write about the existence of Tolkien’s photostats (2019, 214), and to give reasons why Tolkien
would have been inclined to accept the language of The Equatorie of the Planetis as Chaucer’s:
“Peterhouse’s mingling of dialects matches Tolkien’s sense of Northern intrusions, and linguistic
analysis by R. M. Wilson echoed his own long-held views on Chaucer’s language: ‘If he lived in an
area of mixed dialect, such as that of London, he might well be familiar with a variety of forms,
any of which he could use when necessary for the sake of rhyme’ (p. 146). The Equatorie’s
inclusion of [the preposition] overthwart [MS f. 73r ouerthwart and f. 77v ou[er]thwart ‘across’]
would certainly have caught Tolkien’s attention as the distinctive Chaucerian word
[overthwart/overthwert] for which he had supplied an especially long note on its appearance in
The Book of the Duchess [c. 1370]” (2019, 215; see 108–109 for the long note). See Cossio for other
non-linguistic rationale (2022, 172–73). Additional contemporary evidence could have further
strengthened Tolkien’s belief; see Price and Wilson for a “number of words which, before their
appearance in this text [The Equatorie of the Planetis], are recorded elsewhere in Middle English
only in the works of Chaucer, and more particularly in his Treatise on the Astrolabe [c. 1391]”
(1955, 137; see also 146–48).
4 Kari Anne Rand has attributed The Equatorie of the Planetis to John Westwyk (2015, 15–35).
Price and Wilson’s claims were contested but never disproved in their lifetimes. See Price for a
succinct list of their supporting evidence (1953, 224). See also Price (1952d, 158 and 160–64), and
Price and Wilson (1955, 141 and 145–66).
5 Price acknowledges the help of “Professor J. R. R. Tolkien,” but Tolkien’s name appears among
a long list of scholars thanked for their assistance with a rather generic “For other requests” (1955,
xv–xvi). The list is ordered alphabetically, and therefore Tolkien’s position cannot determine the
amount of help provided. Unfortunately, the new evidence does not confirm or deny Cossio’s most
intriguing conjecture: “What characterizes Tolkien’s scholarly work on Chaucer is the scrupulous
attention devoted to specific linguistic points. Thus, he may have been aware, after careful
examination of The Equatorie of the Planetis, that its attribution to Chaucer rested on
inconclusive evidence. This view of course would have challenged Price and Wilson’s assumptions
and it may explain why we know so little about Tolkien’s involvement. Given Price and Wilson’s
commitment to the hypothesis of Chaucerian authorship, it is reasonable to assume that Tolkien
would have preferred to limit his participation in the project” (2022, 173).

The Missing Letters Tolkien Received from D. J. Prince and R. M. Wilson

It is best to present the bare evidence first, unfettered from conjectures and
observations, so that readers can judge objectively the value of the analysis and
hypotheses formulated throughout the paper. The following pages present the dates and
locations in which the letters and other materials were on sale, together with the sellers’
descriptions of the items in chronological order. It is surprising to learn that the epistles
first emerged in Oxford, as most major auction activity in the United Kingdom occurs in
London. The description of lot 43 of an auction catalogue of Phillips, Oxford, from 20
October 1988 reads (Phillips, unpaginated):

[Tolkien ephemera]: 3-page typed letter signed from Derek Price to T., 1952; and 2pp. typed
letter and typed article from R. M. Wilson signed with relative offprints and an ALS from
Sir Lionel Whitby, Master of Downing College to Tolkien, 1950; and a number of signed
pamphlets, etc. E £20–306

The next time the location of the letters was made public, these were housed in London,
which takes us to another catalogue. In 1991, Maggs Bros. Ltd. (1991a, unpaginated)
advertised the sale of the following lot:

[708] TOLKIEN (J.R.R.) A Collection of Philiological (sic) and Literary Offprints from
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Working Library. Being three hundred and ninety-two items, all with
Tolkien’s library label,7 a large proportion inscribed to him by the respective authors, and
a number additionally annotated by Tolkien himself. 1883 to 1972. £50008

The description runs on without any reference to the letters, but such a large number of
items required a proper list. Maggs Bros. Ltd. invited any curious inquirer to browse
through its contents indeed: “A detailed catalogue of the material is available on request”
(1991a, unpaginated). The inventory contained two familiar items disclosed earlier in
1988 plus some additional surprises:

[326] PRICE (Derek J.) Interesting and lengthy Typed Letter Signed to Prof. Tolkien on a
possible Chaucer holograph. 3pp. Royston, Herts, 1952.
[327] PRICE (Derek). The Equatorie of the Planetis. Reprint from the TLS.9 With his calling
card attached.10 Illustrated. See under Wilson for a reply to this article. With the printing
of this article in Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science.11> London, The
TLS, 1952. (Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991b, 23)

6 Typos in quotations from catalogues have been silently corrected except for the typo in
‘philiological’ (sic), which is highlighted in bold (Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991a; Sotheby’s 1995). All
capitalisation, italics, and brackets also in the originals.
7 For a scan of the label and a brief explanation on its origin see:
<https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/from-tolkiens-library/>.
8 I do not quote the rest of the description of the lot because a synthesised and equally informative
one is included in the excerpt from Sotheby’s catalogue (1995) below.
9 See Price for the full reference (1952a; 1952b). Tolkien had at least two copies of each (Price
1952a; 1952b) because his clippings remain in Oxford (Cossio 2021, 1–2).
10 See the Appendix for a reproduction of Price’s contact card found clipped to the front of
OFFPRINT/MMS/D3/7 at Merton College Library (Oxford). OFFPRINT/MMS/D3/7 is an
offprint of Price 1952d that the author presented to Merton College.
11 Price must have forwarded this article a year later (1953) than the two Times Literary
Supplement contributions (Price 1952a; 1952b) because this piece saw the light of day when the
edition of The Equatorie of the Planetis was finished in July 1953. See Price for the full reference
(1953).

ANDONI COSSIO

100

[383] WILSON (R.M.) TLS to Prof. Tolkien. 2pp. with c. 30pp carbon typescript of his
analysis of the prose language of Chaucer’s Equatorie. See under Price for the article which
stimulated this. Sheffield, 1953. (Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991b, 27)

It appears that no buyer was interested (£5000 was an excessive price, even considering
the great number of items, for the year 1991). Four years elapsed and the lot found its
way into a Sotheby’s auction on 18 December while still in London. There is no mention
of the letters, though it is obvious from the number of items, title, and information that
both lots advertised are the exact same undivided bundle which belonged to an identical
seller (cf. Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991a and Sotheby’s 1995). Further proof of this is the typo
in “PHILIOLOGICAL” which is directly (and uncritically) borrowed and reprinted in
Sotheby’s catalogue in the lot’s title but corrected in the description (cf. Maggs Bros. Ltd.
1991a and Sotheby’s 1995). It is here included in full with the interest of other scholars
in mind, in particular for the unproven literary inspirations:

356 TOLKIEN (J.R.R.) A COLLECTION OF PHILIOLOGICAL (sic) AND LITERARY
OFFPRINTS FROM THE AUTHOR’S WORKING LIBRARY, all with Tolkien’s library
label, a large number inscribed to him by respective authors (including A.C. Baugh, A.J.
Bliss, Norman Davis, Henry Sweet, C.L. Wrenn and others), 56 WORKS ADDITIONALLY
ANNOTATED BY TOLKIEN, a total of 392 offprints, 1883 to 1972 [chiefly 1940s and
1950s]
The varied subject matter chiefly concerns philological problems of Early and Middle
English, with many references to the extant texts, many (including Beowulf, Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight, etc) re-edited and re-translated by Tolkien himself. Pamphlets such
as H.E. Allen’s Influence of Superstition on Vocabulary (1935) and R.G. Haliburton’s
Survival of Dwarf Races in the New World (1894) can be seen to relate not only to Tolkien’s
academic work, but also to his popular fiction.12 £1,000–1,500 (Sotheby’s 1995,
unpaginated)

The price was more reasonable this time, but no sales records are available, provided that
the lot sold, and the letters are since that sale hidden to this day from the public eye.13

There is no more information available about the letters, and it is now time to turn
our attention to the importance of the quotations above. Maggs Bros. Ltd. dates the letter
from Price to 1952 and Wilson’s to 1953 (1991b, 23 and 27), and the reprint of the Times
Literary Supplement with the calling card and the “article in Bulletin of the British
Society for the History of Science” are said to be from 1952 (1991b, 23). The article from
the Bulletin, as indicated in footnote no. 7, is from July 1953, and this suggests that Price
wrote to Tolkien at least twice during the collaboration period, an assistance which for
reasons provided below can be restricted to the following interval: January 1952–July
1953. In light of the new evidence, it becomes apparent that Cossio overlooked minor,
though essential, bits of information which made him adopt a conservative stance about

12 Both Allen’s and Haliburton’s were missing in Cilli’s (2019) first edition. These have been
included Cilli’s second edition, Allen as no. A 20 (2023, 8), Haliburton as A 906 (2023, 122),
though the latter is out of alphabetical order, it should be renumbered A 897 (2023, 121).
13 Nothing is known about Tolkien’s replies either, and these are not among the almost 10000
catalogued items of the largest collection of Price’s papers, preserved at CAPHÉS: Centre
d’Archives en Philosophie, Histoire et Édition des Sciences (Paris). There are no replies from
Tolkien either at Christ’s College (Cambridge), Needham Research Institute (University of
Cambridge), Parker Library (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge), Perne Library (Peterhouse
College, Cambridge), R. M. Wilson Memorial Collection (Special Collections, University of
Sheffield), and Whipple Museum of the History of Science (University of Cambridge).

The Missing Letters Tolkien Received from D. J. Prince and R. M. Wilson

101

the dates: “Tolkien offered his assistance [to Price and Wilson] between c. 1951–1955”
(2021, 1). The discovery of The Equatorie of the Planetis and Price’s work on the
manuscript already narrows down the dates. Price found The Equatorie of the Planetis
in his own words “at the beginning of December 1951,” and shortly after at some
unspecified time sought permission from Peterhouse College to unbind it to read some
of its hidden content (1955, xiv).14 Price notes that “The detailed study of the manuscript
has been made much easier for me by the kindness of the Syndics of the Cambridge
University Press, who provided a set of photographs taken while the quires of the volume
lay detached from their former tight binding” (1955, xvi). The photostats Price sent to
Tolkien are copies of those original photographs. The manuscript was rebound before 22
May 1952 (see Falk 2014, 121), and therefore it was photographed between late December
1951 and early May 1952. Price may have ordered or sent the photostats later than 22
May 1952, though quite earlier than July 1953, the date when he signed the preface of
the by then completed edition of The Equatorie of the Planetis (1955, xvi).15

An informed guess would assume that most correspondence occurred during 1952.
This can be explained by several factors. By late December/early January, Cambridge
University Press had accepted Price’s proposal of an edition of The Equatorie of the
Planetis and its connection to Geoffrey Chaucer (Falk 2014, 116–117 and 131), and Price
was allowed to change the topic of his PhD on 9 May 1952, abandoning the history of
crafting scientific instruments, and embracing his wish to edit The Equatorie of the
Planetis (Falk 2014, 122 and 132). Given that Price was a living embodiment of
determination,16 he would not have waited long to have the photographs taken and copies
made, and to duly begin contacting experts in various fields, including Chaucerians of
course, and sending them the reproductions with queries. This probably happened
before 22 May 1952, the day on which he shared his findings and a similar instrument to
the one described in The Equatorie of the Planetis with the scientific community at a
Royal Society event.17 This takes us to Oxford and therefore to Tolkien once again. Price
borrowed an equatorium from Merton College, Oxford, to illustrate his presentation at
the Royal Society Conversazione in London. The Merton College Governing Body
approved the loan of the item on 17 March 1952 (Falk 2014, 132): “9. That an astrolabe
[with an equatorium on its back] (circa 1350) in the College Library be loaned to the
Royal Society for a Conversazione in May 1952, the instrument to be insured for £500”
(Merton College Governing Body 1952, unpaginated). Tolkien was present during that

14 This enabled Price to confirm that an inscription reads “chaucer” on f. 5v of the MS (1952a, 164;
1952d, 160; 1955, xiv). Reproductions of the inscription can be found on page 12 of the digitised
MS and in the accompanying article on University of Cambridge Digital Library website:
<cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-PETERHOUSE-00075-00001/1>.
15 Two letters from Price to the Perne Librarian (Peterhouse College), dated 15 February 1954 and
6 April 1954, confirm that he revised the edition’s proofs during those dates. In the 15 February
1954 letter, Price announced that the edition was scheduled to be published in Autumn of that
year, though no reason for the delay has been found among his papers. The letters are stored at
the Perne Library, Peterhouse College, Cambridge (Perne Library MSS enquiries. MSS 1–100). It
is possible, though unlikely, that Price contacted Tolkien again during those months.
16 See Seb Falk for illustrative examples of Price’s personality (2014, 114–17). See also Silvio A.
Bedini (1984, 95–100) and Eri Yagi, Lawrence Badash, and Donald de B. Beaver (1996, 65–74).
17 See Falk for the importance of this scientific gathering and the coverage Price’s discovery
received (2014, 111, 120–22 and 127).

ANDONI COSSIO

102

meeting (Scull and Hammond 2017a, 405), which means that the request was placed
before and that Tolkien was aware of Price’s dealings with the college at an earlier point.18

The question remains whether it was Price’s idea to contact Tolkien or if this thought
was prompted by someone else. Cossio points at Wilson’s referral (Cossio 2022, 170), but
is it possible that the liaison was part of Tolkien’s social circle? This enquiry directs us to
the history of the discovery once more. Until the manuscript was disbound, Price was not
quite convinced that The Equatorie of the Planetis could be Chaucer’s or even Chaucer’s
holograph. The quires were removed from their binding at best by late December 1951
after permission was granted by Peterhouse College (Price 1955, xiv). However, it was
not until the end of January 1952, after comparing his finding with other manuscripts,
that Price felt confident and began to advertise his discovery (1955, xiv–xv; Falk 2014,
116 and 131).19 On 7 March 1952, C. T. Onions published a letter in response to a fragment
of the beginning of the Middle English treatise in The Equatorie of the Planetis (f. 71v)
that had appeared a week earlier in The Times (173).20 In this letter, Onions provided
philological evidence from the fragment to argue that regardless of the authorship of the
manuscript, the south-eastern Middle English enches (variant of inches, which replaces
the Old English ‘y’ for ‘e’) and “such south-eastern forms are found in Chaucer’s
canonical works” (1952, 173).21 This kind of expertise was invaluable to Price, and Onions
was in turn consulted and thanked (Price 1955, xvi). Onions takes us back to Tolkien
through another route, since a file among Tolkien’s papers (Tolkien VC 277) contains a
newspaper clipping of Onions’s letter (Cossio 2021, 1).22 It is plausible that Tolkien
discussed this enticing philological observation with his friend Onions shortly after,23
and this may have prompted Onions to direct Price to Tolkien.

The “calling card” Price attached to the “Reprint from the TLS” (Maggs Bros. Ltd.
1991b, 23) mostly overrules the possibility that Tolkien contacted him first. Either Price
knew about Tolkien’s expertise,24 or Tolkien was recommended by “the Librarian and
[/or other members of] the Society of Merton College” (Price 1955, xv), Onions, or
Wilson. Price partnered with Wilson at an unspecified date, but this happened soon

18 However, that had to be after the 17 January and 13 February monthly meetings of the
Governing Body in which Price’s request was not discussed (Merton College Governing Body
1952, unpaginated).
19 An anonymous article was printed in Cambridge University newspaper Varsity (“Chaucer
Holograph Found in Library,” 23 Feb. 1952) and another in The Times (“Possible Chaucer
Manuscript: Discovery at Cambridge,” 28 Feb. 1952, 6). See Price for the articles under his name
that ensued (1952a, 1952b, 1952d). The anonymous report in The Times summarises in brief Price
1952a and 1952b. See Price for another two pieces he wrote on the Equatorie of the Planetis before
the edition was published (1952c, 1953). See Bedini for all related works published by Price until
1955 (1984, 102–03). Also in Yagi, Badash, and Beaver (1996, 77).
20 See note 19 for reference. See J. A. W. Bennett for Onions’s short biography and philological
expertise (2009, unpaginated).
21 In fact, the south-eastern form enche(s) is used consistently throughout the MS. However, as
Price and Wilson admit, Chaucer’s “e-forms for OE. y seem to be much less frequent in his prose
than in his verse” (1955, 146).
22 Tolkien VC 277 is kept at Special Collections, Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, University of
Oxford.
23 Onions was a Stipendiary Fellow from 1923 until 1965 at Magdalen College, Oxford, and the
College Librarian during 1940–1955 (Bennett 2009, unpaginated). Tolkien was then the Merton
Professor of English Language and Literature (1945–1959), and Merton is less than 5 minutes
away from Magdalen. See Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond for the Onion-Tolkien relation
(2017b, 907–08).
24 See Cossio (2022, 171 and 173). In Hilary Term 1952 (Jan.–Mar.), Tolkien was lecturing on
Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale (Scull and Hammond 2017a, 404).

The Missing Letters Tolkien Received from D. J. Prince and R. M. Wilson

103

enough and earlier than December 1952 (Price 1952d, 155),25 because Price needed a
philologist to help him work on the manuscript’s language:

It was also fortunate that Mr R. M. Wilson, M.A., consented to act as adviser on the
linguistic side. In addition to writing Chapter X and compiling the Glossary, he has also
provided the section on Punctuation in Chapter IX, and we have collaborated in the
translation of the text. Throughout the preparation of this edition we have had frequent
consultations. (Price 1955, xiii)

Wilson could have been the liaison between Price and Tolkien, but, unfortunately, the
information in the catalogue does little to clarify such detail. Maggs Bros. Ltd. catalogue
errs in suggesting that the Times Literary Supplement article “stimulated” a “30pp
carbon typescript of his analysis of the prose language of Chaucer’s Equatorie” (1991b,
27), since that article in two parts contains scanty linguistic samples to work with (1952a,
1952b). In the letter (Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991b, 27), Wilson may mean that the article
sparked his curiosity instead, and the wordy carbon typescript seems, by the date and
length, a draft of the translation, linguistic analysis, and related materials to be
submitted to Cambridge University Press. This proves that Tolkien was, at least once,
still queried and his opinions taken into consideration in 1953 as well.

At any rate, by 1953, it is certain Tolkien had almost no time to further assist Price
and Wilson with their requests. In late 1951, most of 1952, and until July 1953 (and
beyond), Tolkien was preoccupied with his legendarium, the publication of The Lord of
the Rings (written between 1937 and 1949, revised until c. 1955, and published in three
parts during 1954–1955) and The Silmarillion (1977),26 and endless administrative,
academic, and social obligations (Scull and Hammond 2017a, 401–25). In mid 1952,
Tolkien’s complaints about the lack of free time were frequent (Scull and Hammond
2017a, 407 and 410), but all leisure was about to vanish. On 10 November 1952, Allen &
Unwin accepted The Lord of the Rings for publication (Scull and Hammond 2017a, 414).
This would leave, from then onwards, no time for Tolkien to spare on anything else that
were not official duties and unavoidable social activities, because he then proceeded to
create complementary material, rewrite, and revise a work of more than half a million
words thoroughly.

It is thus reasonable to expect that Tolkien’s participation in the project was mainly
limited to the first half of 1952, when he was, in all likelihood, first contacted by Price.
Some biographical details point towards possible further assistance, but these are sparse
and far between. Tolkien travelled to Cambridge during 11–18 August 1952 to continue
preparing his long-due and delayed 1962 edition of Ancrene Wisse (Scull and Hammond
2017a, 409), edited from MS Cambridge Corpus Christi College 402, housed at the
Parker Library.27 He stayed at Peterhouse College when alone, and at the Garden House
Hotel when Edith and Priscila Tolkien joined him (Scull and Hammond 2017a, 409).28

25 See the publication’s (Price 1952d) cover for the month.
26 The Silmarillion never reached a final form in Tolkien’s lifetime, and it was published
posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien, with the assistance of Guy Gavriel Kay.
27 On 12–14, 16 and 18 August 1952, in order to gain access to MS Cambridge Corpus Christi
College 402, Tolkien signed the Visitors Book for the Parker Library, stored at Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge (ref. Q-1-20).
28 The Garden House Hotel burnt down on 23 April 1972. The Graduate Cambridge hotel, with
the ‘Garden House’ restaurant within, stands on the same location: Granta Place, Mill Lane,
Cambridge CB2 1RT.

ANDONI COSSIO

104

Tolkien returned to Cambridge to resume his study of the manuscript between late
October and early November 1952 (Scull and Hammond 2017a, 413).29 It is not unlikely
that he met Price briefly during his stays, perhaps even at Peterhouse, but then the
exchange would have occurred, perforce, without a written record.

Despite Tolkien’s interest, it also seems, owing to his duties and literary endeavours,
that he lacked spare hours to prioritise an external project in which he was only an
advisor. This note has provided a few new certainties and fresh hypotheses concerning
academic interconnections and Tolkien’s contribution to Price and Wilson’s edition of
The Equatorie of the Planetis, and has highlighted the value of often neglected auction
catalogues for literary research. That is not comparable, of course, to the facts that the
emergence of the actual letters, carbon typescript, reprints and related material would
uncover, but with no better substitutes, the information that Tolkien was involved in
earnest both in 1952 and 1953 is still valuable. At any rate, there is a large body of items
in the Tolkien family papers at the Weston Library (Oxford) not accessible to researchers,
there are still scores of Tolkien’s personal documents in France, which Christopher kept
at hand while he was working on his books, and, then, there are many letters in private
hands; time will tell but we may learn more about the exchange between Tolkien, and
Price and Wilson before long.

References

Bedini, Silvio A. 1984. “Éloge: Derek J. Desolla Price (1922–1961).”30 Annali dell’Istituto

e Museo di storia della scienza di Firenze 9 (1): 95–115.
https://doi.org/10.1163/221058784X02092.

Bennett, J. A. W. 2009. “Onions, Charles Talbut (1873–1965).” In Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35316.

Bowers, John M. 2019. Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cilli, Oronzo. 2019. Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist. Edinburgh: Luna Press

Publishing.
Cilli, Oronzo. 2023. Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist (second revised and

expanded ed.). Edinburgh: Luna Press Publishing.
Cossio, Andoni. 2020. “Tolkien’s Library: An Annotated Checklist, by Oronzo Cilli.”

Mythlore: A Journal of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and
Mythopoeic Literature 38 (2): 195–204.

Cossio, Andoni. 2021. “Addenda: One Middle English Manuscript and Four Editions of
Medieval Works Known to J. R. R. Tolkien and What They Reveal.” ANQ: A Quarterly
Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews [advance online publication]: 1–8.
https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2021.1932406.

29 Tolkien did not sign the Visitors Book for the Parker Library in either October or November
1952. It is therefore possible he had MS Cambridge Corpus Christi College 402 sent to Cambridge
University Library for consultation. Such minutiae are beyond the scope of this paper, but the
records, if extant, might be found in two sources stored at Special Collections, Cambridge
University Library: “Registers, completed by staff, of readers of manuscripts and ‘select’ books,
1929–1957” (volumes 44–45, UA ULIB 8/1/8), and “Name index to the Librarian’s
correspondence” (box 20, UA ULIB 6/6/3).
30 The correct dates are 1922–1983 and the correct spelling is “de Solla.”

The Missing Letters Tolkien Received from D. J. Prince and R. M. Wilson

105

Cossio, Andoni. 2022. “Further Notes on J. R. R. Tolkien’s Photostats of The Equatorie
of the Planetis (MS Peterhouse 75.I).” SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for
Medieval English Language and Literature 27: 166–76.
https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.27.2022.166-176.

Falk, Seb. 2014. “The Scholar as Craftsman: Derek de Solla Price and the Reconstruction
of a Medieval Instrument.” Notes & Records: The Royal Society Journal of the
History of Science 68 (2): 111–34. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2013.0062.

Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991a. A Becket to Zola: 19th and 20th Century Literature. Sales
catalogue, no. 1133, summer. London: Maggs Bros. Ltd.

Maggs Bros. Ltd. 1991b. Unnamed Document [Contents of lot no. 708 (Maggs Bros. Ltd.
1991 Sales Catalogue, no. 1133): 392 Items from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Library, 28pp.].
Maggs Bros. Ltd.’s private archive. London: Maggs Bros. Ltd.

Merton College Governing Body. 1952. Minutes of the Governing Body: 1947–1955.
Merton College Library (MCR 1.5D): Merton College, Oxford.

Onions, C. T. 1952, Mar. 7. “The Equatorie of the Planetis.” The Times Literary
Supplement 2614: 173.

Phillips. 1988. Printed Books: Sale No. 1359. Auction Catalogue, Oct. 20. Oxford:
Phillips inc. Brooks.

Price, Derek J. 1952a, Feb. 29. “The Equatorie of the Planetis–I.” The Times Literary
Supplement 2613: 164.

Price, Derek J. 1952b, Mar. 7. “The Equatorie of the Planetis–II.” The Times Literary
Supplement 2614: 180.

Price, Derek J. 1952c, Sept. 20. “Chaucer’s Astronomy.” Nature 170 (4325): 474–75.
https://doi.org/10.1038/170474a0.

Price, Derek J. 1952d, Dec. “The Equatorie of the Planetis.” Journal of the South-West
Essex Technical College and School of Art 3 (3): 154–69.

Price, Derek J. 1953, July. “The Equatorie of the Planetis.” Bulletin of the British Society
for the History of Science 9 (1): 223–26. https://doi:10.1017/S095056360000083X.

Price, Derek J. 1955. “Preface.” In The Equatorie of the Planetis: Edited from Peterhouse
MS. 75. I, edited by Derek J. Price and R. M. Wilson, xiii–xvi. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Price, Derek J., and R. M. Wilson, eds. 1955. The Equatorie of the Planetis: Edited from
Peterhouse MS. 75. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rand, Kari Anne. 2015. “The Authorship of The Equatorie of the Planetis Revisited.”
Studia Neophilologica 87 (1): 15–35.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00393274.2014.982355.

Scull, Christina, and Wayne G. Hammond. 2017a. The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and
Guide: Chronology (revised and expanded ed.). London: Harper Collins Publishers.

Scull, Christina, and Wayne G. Hammond. 2017b. The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and
Guide: Reader’s Guide, Part II (revised and expanded ed.). London: Harper Collins
Publishers.

Sotheby’s. 1995. English Literature and History and a Collection of Continental
Incunables. Auction catalogue, Dec. 18. London: Sotheby’s.

Yagi, Eri, Lawrence Badash, and Donald de B. Beaver. 1996. “Derek J. de S. Price (1922–
83): Historian of Science and Herald of Scientometrics.” Interdisciplinary Science
Reviews 21 (1): 64–84. https://doi.org/10.1179/isr.1996.21.1.64.

ANDONI COSSIO

106

Appendix. Derek J. Price’s Business Card.

Card clipped to the front of OFFPRINT/MMS/D3/7, Merton College Library, Oxford. By
permission of the Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford.