In Memoriam

Tolkien Studies marks with sadness the passing of three members of the larger Tolkien community: scholar Stephen Medcalf, and publishers Austin G. Olney and Ruth K. Hapgood.

Stephen Medcalf, born in 1936, went up to Merton College, Oxford, in 1956 as a classics scholar, soon switching over to English. Though Hugo Dyson was his tutor, he discussed medieval literature with Tolkien both at Merton College and in Tolkien's study at Sandfield Road. He also attended Tolkien's valedictory address in Merton Hall in June 1959. Medcalf taught at the University of Sussex, as Reader in English in the School of European Studies, from 1979 to 2002, and was for many years one of the few members of the British academic establishment to write appreciatively of Tolkien and his fellow members of the Inklings, C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams—in occasional essays, and via his book reviews in the Times Literary Supplement. Medcalf was one of the Guests at the Tolkien Centenary Conference held at Keble College, Oxford, in August 1992. He died in West Sussex on 17 September 2007.

Austin G. Olney, born in 1922, joined the Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston in 1946 as an editorial trainee and gradually worked his way up in the firm, holding several key positions, including manager of the children's book department, director of sales and promotion, editor-in-chief and director of the trade division. He was elected to the board in 1965, and in 1986 was named a senior vice president and made director of the newly-merged trade and reference division. In the mid 1950s he had worked on the original American publication of The Lord of the Rings along with Paul Brooks and Anne Barrett, and afterwards had much involvement with the publishing of Tolkien in America. He was as gentlemanly and kindly as his British counterpart in Tolkien-publishing, Rayner Unwin, though Olney's name was less known to the public due to his preference for staying behind the scenes and letting his writers have all of the attention. (Olney wrote a commemorative booklet The Hobbit Fiftieth Anniversary 1938-1988 and characteristically noted his authorship only in small print in the credits at the end.) The last book he oversaw at Houghton was The Annotated Hobbit, retiring just before its publication in 1988. His final years were diminished by Alzheimer's disease, and he passed away at his Marlborough, New Hampshire home in late February 2008.

Working with Austin Olney throughout the 1970s and 80s was Ruth K. Hapgood (born in 1920), who had joined Houghton Mifflin as an editor in 1962. After Olneys retirement in 1988, she took over the Tolkien list until her own retirement in 1993. She passed away in Lincoln, Massachusetts, aged 86, on 6 January 2007.