Oh Lord, more elves

A new novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, started in 1918 and partly/posthumously assembled from notes by his son, will be released next month.

My title quotation is inspired by a favorite literary anecdote. Reportedly, during a meeting of the Inklings, the Oxford dons' book club whose members included Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, Tolkien read passages from his manuscript for The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien was a terrible public speaker and reader, mumbling and droning, and his fellow English teacher, Hugo Dyson, promptly fell asleep. When he woke up and heard what was still going on, Dyson exclaimed, "Oh no, not another fucking elf." Thereafter, Tolkien limited his readings to those meetings of the Inklings when Dyson wasn't present. (And Dyson promptly became a personal hero of mine.)

Or so I always thought that's how it went. But Wikiquote says the line has also been attributed, ironically enough -- to Tolkien's son, Christopher.