The NYT is re-running a 1967 interview with JRR Tolkien, with a bunch of obscure bio notes about his early years in South Aftrica thrown in.
Hobbits aren’t small; nor are any of Tolkien’s people. He says warmly: “I don’t like small creatures. Hobbits are three to four feet in height. You can see people walking around like that. If there was anything I detested it was all that Drayton stuff; hideous. All that hiding in cowslips, Shakespeare took it up because it was fashionable but it didn’t invite his imagination at all. He produced some nice, funny names like Cobweb, Peaseblossom and so on; and some poetic stuff about Titania, but he never takes the slightest notice of her. She makes love to a donkey.”
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(Thanks, Pat!)