Dear Tollers, I have been trying—like a boy with a bit of toffee—to take Vol. I slowly, to make it last, but appetite overmastered me and it’s now finished: far too short for me. The spell does not break. The love of Gimli and the departure from Lothlórien is still almost unbearable. What came out stronger at this reading than on any previous one was the gradual coming of the shadow—step by step—over Boromir. —Letter to J. R. R. Tolkien, December 7, 1953
