TCG Letter #1015

Little is known of this letter to Tolkien from his friend and supporter R.W. (Raymond Wilson) Chambers but a fragment found in The Fall of Arthur ^{https://www.tolkienguide.com/guide/books/17[1]} is of interest. Christopher Tolkien in his foreword to that volume states that no firm date is known for when his father started The Fall of Arthur but in the fragment Christopher writes that "in that letter he described how he had read Arthur on a train journey to Cambridge, and on the way back ‘took advantage of an empty compartment to declaim him as he deserves’. He praised the poem with high praise: ‘It is very great indeed … really heroic, quite apart from its value in showing how the Beowulf metre can be used in modern English.’ And he ended the letter ‘You simply must finish it.’