Letter 34

Letter 34 is the thirty-fourth letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Summary
Tolkien expressed that he had worked hard for a month on the continuation to The Hobbit and had come to Chapter XI. He was altogether fascinated in it with all the strings close by yet needed to set it aside for an inconclusive period. His friend E.V. Gordon had kicked the bucket amidst Honors Exams and Tolkien needed to wrap up the papers. Tolkien still planned to present the continuation early in 1939.

Tolkien elucidated that when he had said that the continuation had gotten "crazy" he implied that it was running its course and was turning out to be additionally frightening than The Hobbit, with the dimness of the present days (i.e. the Czechoslovak emergency and the worry of war in late September 1938) having had some impact on it. Notwithstanding, it was not an "allegory".