If you think you already know J. R. R. Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters, then think again. The first edition, edited by Baillie Tolkien (the wife of Christopher Tolkien), was published in 1976. It contains a selection of letters, written by Tolkien under the guise of "Father Christmas", for his own children, over the years 1920 through the early 1940s. The letters themselves set up a marvelous quasi-mythology for Father Christmas, with his elves at the North Pole, and their battles with Goblins, and the thrilling exploits of the Polar Bear. (There is even a Goblin Alphabet!) The letters themselves tell various stories, year after year, frequently with some charming illustrations by Tolkien. So how could such a wonderful volume be bettered?

Easy: that is to publish all of the letters and all of the illustrations, including the various envelopes, which have designs and illustrations and mock stamps as well. And this is exactly what this new edition does. The book is now retitled Letters from Father Christmas (Houghton Mifflin, 0-618-00937-X, $20.00), a title which is confusingly similar to a Griffin and Sabine styled edition of a few years ago. But this new edition is the one to buy. The publisher has a phrase on the front cover which states that it "includes unpublished letters and drawings", but that doesn’t really do justice to the amount of new material contained in this new edition. The format is also improved, and I can’t resist scanning in a few pages from the new edition, showing some pages of letters reproduced photographically highlighting Father Christmas’s spidery handwriting, and the gorgeous color illustrations. This is the best new Tolkien book this Christmas, for readers of all ages.

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