Luna Press Publishing has today announced the forthcoming publication of a new biography of J.R.R. Tolkien’s guardian Father Francis Morgan.
“Uncle Curro”: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Spanish Connection by Spanish scholar José Manuel Ferrández-Bru will be available in English for the first time on 5 June 2018. There will be a simultaneous (second) edition in Spanish.
Anyone who has read earlier biographies of Tolkien understands the importance of the Roman Catholic priest who became the legal guardian of the Tolkien brothers after the sad death of their mother, Mabel Tolkien, in 1904. He is probably best remembered for discovering Tolkien’s secret romance with Edith Bratt, and forbidding Tolkien to correspond with her until he was twenty-one. Humphrey Carpenter, in particular, seems to have downplayed some of Father Morgan’s virtues, which Señor Ferrández-Bru sets out to redress, to portray a far more balanced portrait of this seminal figure.
From the publisher
The book is a biography, but not only a biography. It reconstructs the almost unknown life of Francis Morgan (1857–1935), a Catholic priest of Anglo-Spanish origin, who was involved in the sherry trade, and was guardian and “second father” of author J.R.R. Tolkien.
There is one aspect of of [Tolkien’s] biography that has been barely investigated so far: his early years and the lasting relationship of Tolkien (who was orphaned as a child) with his guardian, Father Francis Morgan.
The book is not merely a biography of Tolkien’s guardian; the data collected about Tolkien’s personal relationship with Morgan as well as a comparative review of his work with that of the illustrious ancestors of his guardian in Hispanic literature, reveal curious parallels that give rise to the hypotheses about the influence (yet unknown) of them on Tolkien.
A pre-order discount is only available through the Luna Press website, and don’t forget you can have the book delivered to The Tolkien Society Seminar in Leeds on 1 July 2018, or the Society’s Oxonmoot in Oxford 20–23 September 2018.
To discover more about the forthcoming book, please see the Luna Press Publishing website.
