Ep. 22: Leaf by Niggle with Fr. Dan Bedel Tea with Tolkien

In this episode, we are joined for Tea by Father Dan Bedel! We talked about one of Tolkien’s lesser-known works, Leaf by Niggle, as well as Tolkien’s Catholic faith, Harry Potter, and the upcoming Lord of the Rings tv show being produced by Amazon.
Tolkien writes that this story is “the only thing I have ever done which cost me absolutely no pains at all. Usually I compose only with great difficulty and endless rewriting. I woke up one morning (more than 2 years ago) with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out. I am not aware of ever ‘thinking’ of the story or composing it in the ordinary sense.” - Letter 98
“I recollect nothing about the writing, except that I woke one morning with it in my head, scribbled it down -- and the printed form in the main hardly differs from the first hasty version at all. I find it still quite moving, when I reread it. It is not really or properly an ‘allegory’ so much as ‘mythical’. For Niggle is meant to be a real mixed-quality person and not an ‘allegory’ of any single vice or virtue…” - Letter 241