Mr Bliss by J R R Tolkien

Mr Bliss

by J. R. R. Tolkien

A brand new edition of the long unavailable children’s story, written and illustrated by the author of The Hobbit and Letters from Father Christmas, with newly scanned manuscript pages and redesigned text.

Professor J.R.R. Tolkien invented and illustrated the book of Mr Bliss’s adventures for his own children when they were very young. The story is reproduced here exactly as he created it – handwritten with lots of detailed and uproarious colour pictures.

This is a complete and highly imaginative tale of eccentricity. Mr Bliss, a man notable for his immensely tall hats and for the girabbit in his garden, takes the whimsical decision to buy a motor car. But his first drive to visit friends quickly becomes a catalogue of disasters. Some of these could be blamed on Mr Bliss’s style of driving, but even he could not anticipate being hijacked by three bears.

As for what happened next – the readers, whether young or old, will want to discover for themselves. Thankfully all ended well, and even the yellow motor car with red wheels (to which Mr Bliss has taken an understandable and great dislike), came in useful at the end…

Reviewed by Briana @ Pages Unbound on

4 of 5 stars

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Mr. Bliss is a delightful yet little-known story that Tolkien wrote for his children. It’s fairly straightforward as children’s stories go, following the misadventures of Mr. Bliss after he buys a new automobile and discovers it might be more trouble than it’s worth, so I can see why the tale isn’t generally mentioned among Tolkien’s bigger works. However, the story is amusing and a must-read for any Tolkien fan.

The published book is a facsimile edition, reproducing Tolkien’s illustrations and hand-lettered text on the right-hand pages, with typed-out text on the left. The illustrations are on the smallish side but still detailed and characteristically Tolkien. There are also some entertaining captions, such as when Tolkien notes that he’s tired of drawing the car in every scene so he simply left it out or when he comments that a character is missing from a certain scene because he rose from his chair to do something else. Normally I’m not a fan of authorial asides, but these come across as personal notes to the reader and are just in the right space between charming and funny.

The plot is wild and clips along at as a fast pace, as Mr. Bliss encounters an increasing number of troubles with his new car, running people over, picking people up, driving into walls, and so forth. I suppose it’s a bit of a story of its time, when automobiles were still kind of wild and new, but it doesn’t read as old or out of touch. Rather, it’s just hilarious and will still resonate with today’s readers. (As a side note, I half wonder if the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender reader Mr. Bliss because there’s a character here who keeps screaming “My cabbages!” and Mr. Bliss keeps as a pet a Girabbit, a cross between a giraffe and a rabbit.)

I’ve been meaning to read Mr. Bliss for years because it’s currently out of print in the US and can be a bit hard to find. I was excited to discover my local library actually has a copy (it never occurred to me to look before), and I highly recommend it to anyone else who can locate a copy.

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  • 3 January, 2018: Reviewed