noWizardme
Gondolin
Mon, 5:31pm
Views: 30
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Further light-hearted speculations
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I was interested to find out just now that Chums paper started in 1892 (as did JRR Tolkien). So my further light-hearted speculation is that it was publishing much the same type of material earlier than the 1930s. If so we could imagine, if we wish, a different and earlier-generation Tolkien boy reading it.
Chums does sound like the sort of magazine that gave us "with one bound Jack was free!"
"There is a delightful story, attributed to more than one publishing house, of the serial writer who disappears in the middle of a story. As he shows no sign of turning up, it is decided to carry on without him. Unfortunately he has left his hero bound to a stake, with lions circling him, and an avalanche about to fall for good measure (or some such situation). Relays of writers try to think of a way out, and give it up. Then at the eleventh hour the missing author returns. He takes the briefest look at the previous installment and then, without a moment's hesitation, writes: 'With one bound Jack was free.'"
— Boys Will Be Boys: The Story of Sweeney Todd, Deadwood Dick, Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter, Dick Barton et al., E.S. Turner (1948) (I'd heard a slightly different version, in which instead of going missing, the author is working away stuck on how to have his hero escape, and it is the tea boy (or other lowly office employee) who takes pity on him and simply writes the famous line. )
Hmm - I've heard of Sexton Blake, Billy Bunter and Dick Barton. I dare not google "Deadwood Dick"! 
But you have to be careful with the "with one bound Jack was free!" sort of thing:
"The bad guy stuck [Rocketman] in a car on a mountain road and knocked him out and welded the door shut and tore out the brakes and started him to his death, and he woke up and tried to steer and tried to get out, but the car went off a cliff before he could escape! And it crashed and burned, and I was so upset and excited, and the next week, you better believe I was first in line. And they always start with the end of the last week. And there was Rocketman, trying to get out, and here comes the cliff, and just before the car went off the cliff, he jumped free! And all the kids cheered! But I didn't cheer. I stood right up and started shouting, 'This isn't what happened last week! Have you all got amnesia ? They just cheated us! This isn't fair! HE DIDN'T GET OUT OF THE COCK-A-DOODIE CAR!'"— Annie Wilkes, Misery (Both my quotes sourced from https://tvtropes.org/...es/CliffhangerCopout
Annie's methods of literary criticism got a bit extreme later, I hear...
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Mon, 5:36pm)
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