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Abercrombie, Lascelles (1881–1938). Lascelles Abercrombie read Science at the Owens College, Manchester, but after only two sessions (1900–2) turned instead to journalism, poetry, drama, and the study of literature. A major figure in the Georgian poets, he was most famously associated with the group of writers, also including Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas, that clustered around Dymock in Gloucestershire. His first book of verse, Interludes and Poems, was published in 1908, and his collected Poems in 1930. Two of his poems, ‘Roses Can Wound’ and ‘“All Last Night …”’, appeared in *Leeds University Verse 1914–24 (1924), to which Tolkien was also a contributor. Abercrombie also wrote critical studies, including Thomas Hardy (1912) and The Epic (1914), and works on aesthetic theory, such as An Essay towards a Theory of Art (1922). During the First World War, declared unfit for reasons of health, he served as a munitions examiner. In 1919 he was named Lecturer in Poetry at the University of Liverpool.

In 1922 Abercrombie became Professor of English Literature at the University of *Leeds, succeeding *George S. Gordon; Tolkien, then Reader in English Language at Leeds, had also sought the chair (a new professorship, of English Language, was created for him two years later). In 1925, when Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair of Anglo-Saxon at *Oxford, Abercrombie as his head of department at Leeds wrote a glowing letter of recommendation. He named Tolkien ‘my principal colleague in the English Department’, who ‘has throughout acted as my advisor and collaborator in the conduct and policy of the department as a whole. … I have never consulted him without gaining an illumination that can penetrate as well as expatiate. But I must not omit to mention that I have gained at least as much from the keen artistic sensibility as from the science of his scholarship’ (*An Application for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford by J.R.R. Tolkien, Professor of the English Language in the University of Leeds, June 25, 1925).

In 1929 Abercrombie left Leeds for the Hildred Carlile Professorship of English Literature at Bedford College, University of London. He remained there until 1935, when he was elected Goldsmiths’ Reader in English at Oxford and a fellow of Merton College.

See further, The Georgian Revolt, 1910–1922: Rise and Fall of a Poetic Ideal by Robert H. Ross (1965). The standard bibliography is A Bibliography and Notes on the Works of Lascelles Abercrombie by Jeffrey Cooper (1969).

Ace Books controversy. When *The Lord of the Rings was first issued in the United States (1954–6) its publisher, the Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston (*Publishers), chose to import printed sheets from Great Britain for binding domestically, rather than newly typeset and print a separate edition. They had long imported copies of *The Hobbit and *Farmer Giles of Ham, and continued to do so for The Lord of the Rings through the 1950s and early 1960s. For a work as unusual as The Lord of the Rings, importation in the first instance presented less financial risk; but in the long run too, at this time, it was more economical for Houghton Mifflin to import sheets than to print their own, and to the advantage also of George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), as exporters of the books, and of Tolkien, because it lowered costs to both of his publishers and made his books more affordable to readers.

This practice meant, however, that the number of imported copies soon exceeded that allowed by the so-called ‘manufacturing clause’ in United States copyright law. U.S. law from 1891 until 1986 sought to protect the American printing industry by limiting the importation of books printed abroad and by promoting domestic manufacture. Under the law as amended in 1949 and in effect at the time of first publication of The Lord of the Rings an American publisher had six months in which to register ad interim copyright for a foreign work written in English, and then five years in which to typeset and print the book in the United States to qualify for full copyright; and in the meantime, no more than 1,500 copies printed abroad could be imported. In contrast, copyright in Great Britain and elsewhere under the Berne Convention (the international copyright agreement to which the United States, almost alone among nations, was not a signatory) was subject to fewer formalities, and was considered in force ipso facto for a living author.

Houghton Mifflin initially imported 1,500 copies of The Fellowship of the Ring and 1,000 copies of The Two Towers, numbers at or within the limit of the ‘manufacturing clause’. They applied for and received ad interim copyright for these volumes, and included copyright notices in the first printing of each to reflect this protection. By the time The Return of the King was ready, however, it was in such demand that Houghton Mifflin imported 5,000 copies, in order to sell as many as possible without delay. Because more than 1,500 copies were imported in the first instance, The Return of the King could not receive ad interim copyright, and did not include an American copyright notice in any printing. As soon as the total number of imported copies of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers exceeded 1,500, Houghton Mifflin omitted copyright notices in those volumes as well.

Knowing that they had passed the limit of imported copies, Tolkien’s publishers began to be concerned about the validity of his U.S. copyright in The Hobbit in the early 1960s, during discussions about the sale of film rights to that work (see *Adaptations). At this time also, with the popularity of The Lord of the Rings well established, American reprint publishers sought to sublicense a paperback edition, but Houghton Mifflin rebuffed all such overtures. In part this was because they did not wish to ‘cheapen’ a work which still sold well in hardback, but also because they were unsure whether they had the authority to grant an exclusive license to publish a paperback edition, given the now questionable copyright status of The Lord of the Rings under U.S. law.

In January 1965 Houghton Mifflin advised Allen & Unwin that the U.S. copyrights of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings might be open to challenge. Although managers at both firms thought it unlikely that any reputable publisher would take advantage of the situation, they also felt that action should be taken to secure U.S. copyright for the two works beyond any doubt. On 8 February 1965 *Rayner Unwin of George Allen & Unwin explained the situation to Tolkien and asked him to provide revisions and extra material for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, such as a long-promised index for the latter, so that the books could be newly submitted for copyright in the United States.

Before Tolkien could do so, however, Ace Books of New York, a well-known publisher of science fiction, issued their own edition of The Lord of the Rings beginning in May 1965, at the then cheap price of seventy-five cents per volume. Ace Books held that the work was in the public domain in the United States, and therefore could be published by anyone without permission. Donald A. Wollheim, the chief editor at Ace Books, said in a contemporary article that it was ‘no secret’ to him that The Lord of the Rings had never been copyrighted in the United States: ‘I had known it from the moment I’d first bought a copy of the Houghton Mifflin edition in a book store when it had first appeared in 1954. One glance at the page following the title page startled me. No copyright, no date of publication. Just the line “Printed in Great Britain” …’ (‘The Ace Tolkiens’, Lighthouse 13 (August 1965), pp. 16–17). In fact, the first printing of the Houghton Mifflin Fellowship of the Ring had included a full statement of rights on the verso of its title-leaf, including ‘Copyright, 1954, by J.R.R. Tolkien’, and the American Two Towers likewise had a proper notice in its first printing. Wollheim evidently had seen a later printing, and not ‘when it [The Fellowship of the Ring only] had first appeared in 1954’. His concern about the inclusion of a copyright notice stemmed from a requirement for this in most books protected under U.S. copyright; but he overlooked an exception to the law as it then existed, for books protected by ad interim copyright.

In the same article Wollheim refuted criticism that was already coming to his attention, within months of publication of the Ace Books edition, in regard to ‘literary piracy’ and the fact that Tolkien was receiving no royalties from Ace Books. Wollheim wrote that Tolkien ‘should reserve his anger for the source of his deprival’, meaning Houghton Mifflin, for failing to secure his U.S. copyright; and he stated that Ace Books was ‘perfectly willing to pay the author for his work – and we’ve stated both publicly and in a message to Tolkien that we want to make an arrangement for such payments’ (‘The Ace Tolkiens’, p. 18). A similar statement by Wollheim concerning payments to Tolkien was quoted also in other venues. On this point Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin on 11 September 1965: ‘I do not believe that any such letter [offering royalties] was ever written to me. I certainly never received one. Had I done so, I should have at once sent the letter to you as … negotiators with Houghton Mifflin’ (Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins).

Tolkien sent material for a revised Lord of the Rings to Houghton Mifflin from July to September 1965. This was incorporated in an authorized and newly copyrighted paperback edition by Ballantine Books of New York (*Publishers) and first published in October 1965. By then Ballantine had already rushed The Hobbit into print without revisions (which Tolkien had not yet completed), to have a Ballantine–Tolkien presence in bookshops as quickly as possible and to forestall any unauthorized paperback of The Hobbit which might appear. A revised Hobbit was published by Ballantine finally in February 1966. Every copy of the Ballantine Hobbit and Lord of the Rings carried a statement by Tolkien in reply to Ace Books: ‘This paperback edition, and no other, has been published with my consent and co-operation. Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it and no other.’ And a new Foreword in the Ballantine Lord of the Rings conveyed Tolkien’s view that it was ‘a grave discourtesy, to say no more, to issue my book without even a polite note informing me of the project’. Privately he also undertook a campaign against Ace Books in correspondence with American readers, to whom he remarked on the nature of theft. Altogether this produced a groundswell of opinion in Tolkien’s favour which seriously undercut sales of the Ace edition, even though the Ballantine Lord of the Rings was more expensive by twenty cents per volume.

Tolkien’s authorized publishers expressed their point of view as well – firmly in opposition to Ace Books – in the popular press, which brought the ‘war over Middle-earth’ (as some writers called it) further to public attention. A legal challenge was ruled out, as Rayner Unwin recalled: ‘Houghton Mifflin were not confident that they could enjoin Ace Books for breach of copyright, and from our general understanding of this complicated and untested branch of American law we [Allen & Unwin] agreed’ (George Allen & Unwin: A Remembrancer (1999), p. 118).

Whether or not the Ace Books Lord of the Rings was legally a ‘pirate’, the ethical aspects of the issue were strong and recognized as such by Tolkien’s fans. Some took it upon themselves to send him ‘royalties’; others, such as Nan C. Scott, wrote directly to the managers of Ace Books to complain about their treatment of Tolkien. In reply to Mrs Scott, Donald Wollheim again denied ‘piracy’ and declared Ace Books willing to offer Tolkien ‘some sort of royalty or honorarium, at our own volition’ (quoted in Rayner Unwin, George Allen & Unwin: A Remembrancer, p. 120). Mrs Scott addressed this point in a letter to the Saturday Review of 23 October 1965 (p. 56, in response to an article on the Ace–Tolkien controversy), noting that the tone of Wollheim’s reply to her ‘was a mixture of the suavely apologetic and the insolent, and the letter contained the suggestion that, if I were in touch with Professor Tolkien, I ask him to write to Ace Books about arranging a royalty, though the firm had no obligation to pay one!’ A letter by Wollheim himself in the same Saturday Review suggested that it was up to Tolkien to write to Ace Books if he was offended by their edition: ‘It seemed correct to us to ask one of [his] correspondents [Nan C. Scott] to tell him of our interest, for he did not write us nor did we even have his address’ (p. 56, emphasis ours).

Tolkien and his publishers on their part refused to countenance Ace Books’ claims, and in November 1965 the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) Bulletin supported Tolkien in an editorial. After quoting Donald Wollheim’s views in Lighthouse, the Bulletin editor declared:

To pretend that taking anything not nailed down is no robbery; or to protest, as Wollheim has done in another published statement (Saturday Review, Oct. 23 [1965]), that Ace is willing to pay Tolkien royalties but does not know his address; or to complain, with injured innocence, that Tolkien has failed to get in touch with Ace (as if the whole thing were somehow the author’s fault, and he really should apologize), is to adopt a distasteful attitude of wilful ignorance, bad faith and bad manners. Ace would earn more respect by admitting its fault; undertaking not to repeat it; and by making prompt and generous restitution to Professor Tolkien, whose address is: 76, Sandfield Road, Headington, Oxford, England.

Within a month of this pointed editorial, Donald Wollheim wrote to Tolkien (copied to the SFWA), offering to pay an unspecified royalty direct to the author (while continuing to claim no legal obligation to do so), or to use full royalties to establish an annual science-fantasy award through the Science Fiction Writers of America. Wollheim suggested that Ace Books were only now, in December 1965, in a position to know the financial return on their edition relative to their investment. Moreover, in comparing the Ace Lord of the Rings, with its low price and long print run (150,000 copies), to the more expensive and relatively scarce (but hardly unavailable) Houghton Mifflin hardback edition, he implied that Ace Books had done Tolkien a significant favour in bringing his book to a larger audience.

The royalties offered by Ace Books, and the terms to be attached, came to the attention of the Science Fiction Writers of America and were described in their Bulletin for January 1966. ‘It is a giant step forward’, the Society reported, ‘for Ace to have written directly to Tolkien at all, after inexplicably refusing to do so for six months. But Ace’s proposed generosity toward SFWA, coupled with its niggardliness toward Tolkien, again exemplifies this company’s unfathomable mental processes and troglodytic manners. A Tolkien Award would be a good thing. A much better thing – and long overdue – would be payment of full royalties to Tolkien, to whom they belong’ (SFWA Bulletin, January 1966, p. 1).

Tolkien, on his part, had no interest in either establishing a ‘Tolkien Award’ or ‘authorizing’ the Ace edition in any way. He wrote to Rayner Unwin:

What would a skipper say to a pirate who (spying an ominous sail and ensign on the horizon) said ‘Shake hands! If you feel sore about this, I can assure you that we shall spend all the profits of our loot on a hostel for poor sailors’? …

I feel that there are only two ways of taking this offer: 1. Complete refusal to treat with Ace Books or countenance their edition. 2. Acceptance of royalties, if adequate, on the issue so far distributed, provided that Ace then retire from the competition. [29 December 1965, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins]

Unwin preferred the second alternative. After further negotiation, Tolkien and Ace Books came to an agreement by which eventually he received more than $9,000 in royalties on sales. This was formally announced by Ace Books in a press release issued in March 1966, which stated that the firm had ‘been on record from the start as willing to pay royalties to Dr. [sic] Tolkien, but not to his publishers who had forfeited his copyrights in the United States’. The release also included a statement signed by Tolkien but in fact proposed by Donald Wollheim, expressing his happiness to accept Ace Books’ ‘voluntary offer to pay full royalties … even though you have no legal obligation to do so’ (quoted from a reproduction in the Tolkien Journal 2, no. 2 (Astron 1966), p. 4). On 23 February 1966 Tolkien wrote to W.H. Auden that he had ‘signed an “amicable agreement”’ with Ace Books ‘to accept their voluntary offer under no legal obligation: to pay a royalty of 4 per cent. on all copies of their edition sold, and not to reprint it when it is exhausted (without my consent)’ (Letters, p. 367). In a letter of 21 March 1966, sent to the trade magazine Publishers Weekly (printed also, with date of writing, in Tolkien Journal 2, no. 2 (Astron 1966), p. 5), Rayner Unwin disagreed that Ace Books had been ‘on record from the start as willing to pay royalties’: ‘Only after energetic protests from numerous quarters had been sustained for several months did Professor Tolkien receive, in December last, for the first time, a letter from Ace Books.’ Unwin also remarked ‘that the net result of this affair has been to distract an author of genius … from all creative work [i.e. on *The Silmarillion]. Those who admire Professor Tolkien’s books and clamour for more will draw their own conclusion.’

Ace Books’ public relations efforts following their settlement with Tolkien also included an advertisement for their edition of The Lord of the Rings on the final page of John Myers Myers’ Silverlock, published by Ace in 1966. Within its text was the paragraph: ‘By arrangement with Professor Tolkien, these Ace volumes are the only American editions that are paying full royalties directly to the author. They are authentic, complete, unrevised and unabridged.’ This was true, in a manner of speaking: the Houghton Mifflin and Ballantine editions paid royalties only indirectly to Tolkien, through the chain of American publishers and George Allen & Unwin; the Ace volumes were ‘authentic’ and ‘complete’ in and of themselves, as far as those words had any meaning in context; and the books were indeed unrevised (compared to the Ballantine edition) and unabridged (there were, and are, no abridged editions in English). But it was also misleading and self-serving, and apparently little-noticed at the time.

The Ace Books edition of The Lord of the Rings was never reprinted. In 1966–7 the number of copies returned was greater than the number sold, as the Ballantine Books edition became the one clearly preferred by readers.

In later years Donald Wollheim continued to argue that Ace Books had been in the right to issue its edition of The Lord of the Rings, and that Tolkien’s authorized publishers had failed to protect his American copyrights. Some latter-day Tolkien enthusiasts also excuse the Ace Books edition on the grounds that had the issue not been forced, Houghton Mifflin might never have allowed The Lord of the Rings to be published as inexpensive mass-market paperbacks. ‘The Great Copyright Controversy’ by Richard E. Blackwelder, published in Beyond Bree for September 1995, follows this line. Although Blackwelder’s article is useful for its long (though by no means exhaustive) list of references to writings about the Ace Books controversy, he accepts Donald Wollheim’s arguments uncritically. Wayne G. Hammond, F.R. Williamson, and Rayner Unwin offered rebuttals to Blackwelder in Beyond Bree for December 1995. See further, Rayner Unwin, George Allen & Unwin: A Remembrancer, ch. 5; and Descriptive Bibliography, notes for A5c.

The question of the validity of Tolkien’s American copyrights continued to be challenged for more than a quarter-century after the Ace Books affair, and for the same reasons. At last in 1992 the issue was settled in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, in the case of Eisen, Durwood & Co. v. Christopher R. Tolkien et al. Eisen, Durwood, a book packager doing business as Ariel Books, sought a legal declaration that the original text of The Lord of the Rings – specifically, that of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers (The Return of the King was not considered due to ‘differing circumstances’) – was in the public domain in the United States due to the failure of Houghton Mifflin to include a copyright notice in a substantial number of the copies they had published. On the contrary, in a decision delivered on 6 April 1992 Judge Vincent L. Broderick found the Tolkien copyright of the first edition of The Lord of the Rings to be valid, and granted defendants’ motion for summary judgement in their favour. He concluded that even though Houghton Mifflin had not included a notice of copyright in many copies of The Lord of the Rings, the law did not provide for the forfeiture of copyright because of the failure to include such a notice. Indeed, he found, the Copyright Act of 1909 as later amended did not require a copyright notice to be printed in books with subsisting ad interim protection, which was true of the Houghton Mifflin Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers. In presenting their case Eisen, Durwood had abandoned any claim that excessive importation of copies printed abroad had resulted in loss of copyright through violation of the ‘manufacturing clause’; but even if the plaintiff had not done so, the 1909 Act again nowhere stated that forfeiture of copyright would automatically result. Judge Broderick’s decision was upheld on appeal in 1993.

This case immediately laid to rest any doubts about Tolkien’s U.S. copyright in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings or the legal correctness of his and his publishers’ position (apart from its clear moral authority) during the Ace Books controversy. Six years later, the United States Congress passed the Copyright Extension Act in response to a new international agreement on copyright approved by the group formerly known as GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), to which the United States was a signatory. This brought U.S. law regarding the length of copyright into line with the laws of its major trading partners and provided, moreover, that if a work was validly in copyright in any of the signatory countries, it was also to be considered in copyright in all of the other countries party to the agreement. Under this authority the *Tolkien Estate acted to re-register Tolkien copyrights in the United States, reinforcing and extending their validity.

See further, Joseph Ripp, ‘Middle America Meets Middle-Earth: American Discussion and Readership of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, 1965–1969’, Book History (2005), which discusses the Ace Books affair at length.

Acocks Green (Warwickshire). On 17 October 1966 Tolkien wrote to a group of primary school children in *Acocks Green, east of *Birmingham: ‘I lived till I was 8 at *Sarehole and used to walk to A[cocks] G[reen] to see my uncle. It was all “country” then …’ (quoted in Sotheby’s, English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations, London, 16 December 2004, p. 274). Acocks Green is some two miles north-east of Sarehole (now Hall Green). During Tolkien’s years at Sarehole (1896–1900) Acocks Green was still one of three hamlets along the Warwick Road, though already developed into a middle-class suburb of Birmingham since the opening of a local railway station in 1852. Much of its rural landscape was obliterated with the construction of municipal housing beginning in the mid-1920s.

Acta Senatus. Report, in Latin, of a Latin debate at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham, published in the King Edward’s School Chronicle n.s. 26, no. 186 (March 1911), pp. 26–7 The work is not signed, but Tolkien’s authorship is revealed in his papers.

Adaptations. Tolkien took a deep interest in the ‘fortunes’ of his works, ‘as a parent would of a child’ (letter to Carole Batten-Phelps, autumn 1971, Letters, p. 413). He felt strongly about the uses to which his works were put and was selective in what he allowed, in so far as he had the authority to do so and circumstances permitted. As discussed in our essay on the *Ace Books controversy, Tolkien held copyright in his works, but this did not go unchallenged, limiting his ability to deny permission for certain purposes; nor could he ignore the possibility of income from such projects, not only for himself and his family, but also for his publishers George Allen & Unwin (*Publishers), to whom he felt an obligation. Allen & Unwin on their part sought to sub-license Tolkien’s intellectual properties as it seemed best, a common function of publishers to enhance income for their authors as well as for themselves, though in Tolkien’s day it had not yet become as bound up in ‘media’ and merchandising (notably excepting the efforts of the *Walt Disney Studios) as it is today.

In this article we discuss, by no means exhaustively, adaptations of Tolkien’s works for the stage, radio, film, and television. For ‘adaptation’ in the form of ‘fan fiction’, see *Fandom and popularity. For unabridged or abridged readings of Tolkien’s works for broadcast or recording (granted that an abridgement is a special kind of adaptation, and that there may be a fine line between a reading and a dramatization), and for adaptations in print (such as comic-book versions), see notes under individual titles.

See further, Tolkien Adaptations, bd. 10 (2013) of Hither Shore: Interdisciplinary Journal on Modern Fantasy Literature, and Paul Simpson and Brian J. Robb, Middle-earth Envisioned (2013).

STAGE ADAPTATIONS

Interest in dramatic adaptation of Tolkien’s fiction was expressed at least as early as 1953, when Miss L.M.D. Patrick asked permission to perform a stage version of *The Hobbit at St Margaret’s School, Edinburgh. On that occasion Tolkien and George Allen & Unwin approved a limited run; but another play based on The Hobbit, sent to Tolkien by early 1959, seemed to him ‘a mistaken attempt to turn certain episodes … into a sub-Disney farce for rather silly children. … At the same time it is entirely derivative’ (letter to Charles Lewis, George Allen & Unwin, 30 April 1959, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, HarperCollins). He admitted to a prejudice against dramatization and any kind of ‘children’s theatre’, but was willing to consent if an adaptation were ‘good of its kind’, or if the performance of the play were part of the normal processes of a drama school. He felt strongly, however, against the publication of such a work or its performance in a more public venue. Nevertheless, numerous versions of The Hobbit have been performed on stage, some with original songs.