Joy Hill

Margaret Joy Hill (1936-1991) became the secretary of J.R.R. Tolkien during the 1960s, working for George Allen & Unwin since her late teens.

In 1966 she suggested to Tolkien to remove his telephone number from the public directory to avoid phonecalls from fans. Tolkien also asked her legal opinion about denying some fan to write a sequel to The Lord of the Rings.

In 1967 she offered Tolkien a copy of The Children's Treasury of Literature which Tolkien in turn passed to his little grandson, Simon.

In 1968 she discovered in Tolkien's library the poem Bilbo's Last Song.
Tolkien granted to her its copyright as a gift.

On 30 November 1969 Joy Hill attended the event "An Afternoon in Middle-earth", delivering the speech "Coping with a cult". The programme booklet for the event also included an article by Hill on fan letters to Tolkien, in which she writes: