The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology

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Copyright © Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond 2006, 2017

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Source ISBN: 9780008214517

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Version: 2017-10-20

Dedication

In Memory of

RAYNER UNWIN

Mentor and Friend

Contents

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

I

PREFACE

CHRONOLOGY

1857

1870

1888

1889

1890

1891

1892

1893

1894

1895

1896

1897

1898

1899

1900

1901

1902

1903

1904

1905

1906

1907

1908

1909

1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915

1916

1917

1918

1919

1920

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

1936

1937

1938

1939

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

1946

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

NOTES

INDEX

II

PREFACE

LIST OF ARTICLES

READER’S GUIDE A–M

III

READER’S GUIDE N–Z

FAMILY TREES

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Published Writings & Art

Poetry & Translations

WORKS CONSULTED

INDEX

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

OTHER BOOKS BY

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Preface

THIS BOOK has been designed, in both its original edition (2006) and the present revised and expanded edition, to serve as a reference of (at least) first resort for the study and appreciation of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is meant to be a companion to his readers, and a basic guide to his writings and ideas, his life and times, his family, friends, and colleagues, and the places he knew and loved. It is not, despite a similarity of titles, a handbook of his invented lands and characters in the manner of Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle-earth or J.E.A. Tyler’s Complete Tolkien Companion. Nor is it a substitute for standard works such as Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography and Christopher Tolkien’s History of Middle-earth, or for the vast body of critical literature about Tolkien. Although it often will be found useful by itself, in particular where it presents new research and scholarship, its purpose is equally to point to other resources in which a subject is more fully considered or differing points of view are expressed.

The length of this work may surprise readers who, familiar with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, have been less aware of Tolkien’s other writings, or who, perhaps misled by the biographies of our subject that have followed Carpenter (and are largely derived from his book), have thought that Tolkien lived in a simple circumscribed world in which little happened beyond his writing, his teaching, his immediate family, and the Inklings. In fact his life was remarkably full, his circle of friends was wide and varied, and his tales of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins exist alongside other works of fiction and poetry, not least the ‘Silmarillion’ mythology, and next to significant contributions to Old and Middle English studies. In consequence, there is so much to say about Tolkien that we have had to divide our book into parts, two volumes in the original edition, and now three.

The first volume is an extensive Chronology of Tolkien’s life and works. This has allowed us reasonably to assemble – as a biographical essay would not have done, demanding more selection and brevity – many of the miscellaneous details about Tolkien we have gathered in the course of research, details which individually may be of little moment, but in relation to one another can be illuminating. Altogether these form a picture of a extraordinarily busy man: Tolkien the scholar, Tolkien the teacher and administrator, Tolkien the husband and father, Tolkien the creator of Middle-earth. His critics have not always appreciated how busy he truly was – those who claim that he should have published more in his academic fields had he not wasted his time writing fantasy, or those who fault him for not completing The Silmarillion as if he had nothing else to do even in his retirement. One of our aims in this book is to show that Tolkien neither wasted his time nor shirked his responsibilities – to document how much, on a regular basis, duties in connection with his academic career (lectures, classes, supervision of postgraduate students, examinations, committee meetings) occupied his waking hours; how often he and his family were beset by illness and injury; how, to pay doctors’ bills in the years before the National Health Service was established (in 1948) and to provide for his children’s education, he added to an already heavy workload; how he was almost constantly under the threat of deadlines, and if he did not meet them all it was not because he did too little, but because he did so much.

The Chronology also allows us to see when, as sometimes happened, Tolkien’s many responsibilities came into collision. In April 1937, for instance, within the space of a day or two he received for correction proofs of both The Hobbit and his British Academy lecture, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics; while in the summer and autumn of 1953 he prepared simultaneously The Lord of the Rings for publication and his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for radio broadcast, and also wrote two talks to accompany the latter.

The Chronology is not – could not be – a complete day-to-day reconstruction of Tolkien’s life; nevertheless we have been reasonably inclusive, according to the information available to us, for the sake of a fuller picture. This is particularly so during the period from 18 January 1944 to early 1945, when Tolkien frequently described his daily chores, as well as the progress of The Lord of the Rings, in a series of letters to his youngest son, Christopher, then posted abroad in the Royal Air Force (see Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, pp. 67 ff.).

Although the most private of Tolkien’s surviving papers remain private, a great deal else has been open to us, published and unpublished. These papers have been useful not only in adding to our knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien, but in verifying details previously accepted as fact. We found, for instance, in assembling information for 1952 that there was no possible opportunity for Tolkien to travel to Kerry in Ireland that year, as authorities (even ourselves) previously reported. This led, as we investigated further, to a vivid recollection by Tolkien’s daughter Priscilla that the visit was, rather, in 1951, and that she herself had been a participant.

Sometimes, however, evidence has been lacking, and even when present is not always complete or clear-cut. To give only a few examples: we can say that Tolkien attended particular meetings of the Inklings because the facts are mentioned, chiefly in letters by his friend C.S. Lewis, in diaries kept by Warren Lewis, and in letters that Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher. We can list which lectures he was scheduled to give as an Oxford professor, because they were announced prior to each term in the Oxford University Gazette. We know that he was present at certain meetings because minutes are preserved, chiefly in the Oxford University archives. But we know about only some of the holidays he took, from a handful of letters and dated paintings and drawings, and about only some of the society meetings and other events he attended (or could have attended) at King Edward’s School, Birmingham and at Oxford, through secretaries’ minutes, magazine reports, and printed timetables. On occasion, his Oxford lectures were cancelled or rescheduled, but a published announcement of that fact has not always come to our attention; and as for the lectures Tolkien gave at Leeds, such schedules of these that survive in the Leeds University archives name only their subjects, not the lecturers themselves, in consequence of which we have indicated only those lectures that Tolkien seems likely to have given (based partly on the statement he wrote when he applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1925). We know as well that Tolkien marked School Certificate papers for many years, to augment his professor’s salary, and sometimes acted as an external university examiner, but these activities seem to be little documented.

We have also included in the Chronology references to some, but no more than a fraction, of the personal and professional correspondence that consumed another large portion of Tolkien’s time. He received many requests from colleagues for information, or comments on their ideas; requests from colleagues or former students for letters of reference when applying for academic positions; and requests from publishers for his opinion of books under consideration. He was often sent, in addition, offprints of scholarly papers and copies of books, most of which would have required at least an acknowledgement, if not reading and criticism: these amounted to hundreds of titles during his working life. And then, after the publication of The Hobbit and especially The Lord of the Rings, he received thousands of letters expressing appreciation, asking questions, or requesting his autograph. His publishers too were in frequent touch with him about various literary, financial, and legal matters. And all of this was in addition to letters he wrote to and received from his family and intimate friends.

Tolkien’s correspondence with his publisher George Allen & Unwin in particular has been of immense value to us. In many of his letters he writes of personal activities, of academic pressures, and of his or his family’s health, as well as about business at hand. These documents, however, became less frequent in his later years, reflecting increased face to face contact with publisher’s staff and use of the telephone.

Perhaps our greatest difficulty in writing the Chronology has been to decide where to place events which cannot be firmly dated, such as the emergence of the Inklings. Many of Tolkien’s works, moreover, can be placed only within a range of years, and only roughly in order of writing. In doing so, we have relied on internal as well as external evidence – on handwriting, paper, and typefaces, and on the state of development of the work in question. Where Christopher Tolkien as a result of his own extensive research into the history of his father’s writings has been able to group works in a sequential order, we have placed the grouping at the start of the relevant time span, rather than insert the writings in question arbitrarily into the Chronology. We have also made use of dates of composition inscribed by Tolkien on his writings and art, keeping in mind that some of these were added after the fact, sometimes many years later, and that memory can err; but statements by the creator of a work can hold significant weight. In a few instances there is conflicting evidence for dates, most notably for the origin and writing of The Hobbit, and in such cases we have made multiple entries in the Chronology, with cross-references, and have discussed the matter at greater length in the second part of the Companion and Guide.

That part, which we have called the Reader’s Guide, comprises in the course of two volumes a ‘What’s What’, a ‘Where’s Where’, and a ‘Who’s Who’ of Tolkien, arranged in alphabetical order and in a single sequence. It includes, as appropriate, articles or brief entries on:

¶ Tolkien’s academic writings and his works of poetry and prose fiction, with summaries, concise backgrounds or histories, brief surveys of reviews and criticism (in so far as these exist), and miscellaneous commentary. Separate articles are provided for published works; unpublished works are noted as appropriate in topical articles, or in articles on other, related works. We have written separate articles for those of Tolkien’s poems that are published in whole or in large part (i.e. more than a few lines), and are not integral with a larger literary work, e.g. the poems of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, but have omitted separate entry for clerihews and for all but one of the songs (The Root of the Boot, under The Stone Troll) contributed by Tolkien to Songs for the Philologists. Also omitted are entries for letters sent by Tolkien to newspapers or journals.

¶ Key ideas in Tolkien’s writings, such as eucatastrophe and sub-creation, and general topics such as his religion, his views towards women, his invented languages and writing systems, his reading, and disputes over the American copyright of The Lord of the Rings.

¶ Places that Tolkien lived, worked, or visited, the colleges and universities with which he was associated, pubs and bookshops he frequented, and so forth. It should be assumed by the reader that the places named in this book are in England unless otherwise stated, that English counties are referred to generally according to the names and boundaries that existed in Tolkien’s lifetime (before the reorganization of local governments in the later twentieth century), and that while coverage is full, it is not exhaustive: we have not attempted to list every place in which Tolkien set foot. Nor have we attempted to account for every claim by towns and regions (in Britain and elsewhere) to Tolkien’s presence, or as an inspiration for The Lord of the Rings, put forth with the rise in his popularity: some of these are exaggerated, others dubious at best. In all cases we have preferred to rely on documentary evidence such as letters, guest books, and diaries, rather than on assumptions and reported ‘tradition’. It should be noted also that while some of the places described in this book are open to the public, others are not. Readers therefore who wish to follow in Tolkien’s footsteps should take care not to trespass on private property, including college grounds when not open to visitors.

¶ Members of Tolkien’s family; friends and colleagues, especially in Birmingham and at Leeds and Oxford; fellow members of the Inklings and other groups or societies to which he belonged; publishers and editors; notable teachers and students; and major correspondents. Here too, our coverage is selective. Tolkien had many friends and acquaintances, some of whom figured mainly, or wholly, in his private life, and do not appear in published letters or biographies. Our aim has been to give an individual entry to anyone whom we know to have been particularly significant in Tolkien’s life or to the production of his works, or for whom a biographical note gives us the opportunity to describe, more fully than in the Chronology, an important or particularly interesting aspect of Tolkien or his writings. Other persons with whom Tolkien was concerned are mentioned in passing, in various contexts in the Companion and Guide: references to these may be found in the comprehensive index at the end of each volume.

In the Reader’s Guide also, appended to the second volume, are genealogical charts (family trees) of the Tolkien and Suffield families; a bibliographical list of Tolkien’s published writings; a list of his published paintings, drawings, doodles, and maps; a list of his poems, published and unpublished, by title and first line; and a list of his works with the languages into which they have been translated. In addition, we have provided (in the Reader’s Guide only, also in the second volume) a bibliography of the various resources and archives we have used in the writing of the Companion and Guide. A comprehensive index to all three volumes appears both in the Chronology and the second volume of the Reader’s Guide.

A few general notes are in order. J.R.R. Tolkien is sometimes referred to in this book as ‘Ronald’, to distinguish him from other Tolkiens or when reference by his surname seemed inappropriate in construction, and also generally for the young Tolkien, before he went up to Oxford in 1911.

In the Reader’s Guide all entries for persons whose surname begins ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ are alphabetized as if the name begins with ‘Mac’; thus the article for R.B. McCallum appears before that for Gervase Mathew. Although articles in the Reader’s Guide are generally alphabetized in the usual fashion, we have made an exception for those concerned with the Tolkien family in general, its members in particular, and the Tolkien Estate which is a family enterprise: these are presented in this order, intellectual rather than mechanical.

Titles of works are given as found, except that we have regularized the capitalization of hyphenated titles where variation occurs in practice, e.g. On Fairy-Stories, The Sea-Bell. Titles of discrete works given them by Tolkien, including poems, essays, and the individual tales of The Book of Lost Tales, are italicized following Christopher Tolkien’s example in The History of Middle-earth, while titles of chapters or other subsections of text, and titles assigned to Tolkien’s works by others (such as ‘The Ambidexters Sentence’), for the most part are expressed in quotation marks. Excepted are a few titles assigned by Christopher Tolkien which he himself chose to italicize, such as Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin in Unfinished Tales, rather than its author’s choice, Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin (there is a distinct entry for this title, in quotation marks, as that of the twenty-third chapter of The Silmarillion), and Gnomish Lexicon rather than the unwieldy I·Lam na·Ngoldathon. But it is to be understood that ‘The Silmarillion’, so expressed, refers to Tolkien’s mythology in general, and The Silmarillion, so italicized, generally to the book edited by Christopher Tolkien and first published in 1977, except in a few instances (understood in context) to the book that Tolkien wished to complete. All other titles are given in italics or in roman within quotation marks, as appropriate, following common conventions of style, except that we have preferred, on purely aesthetic grounds, not to distinguish titles of books within titles of books by reversion to roman or by quotation marks.

In the Reader’s Guide works whose titles begin ‘Of’ or ‘Of the’ are entered under the next significant word, e.g. ‘Of Beren and Luthien’ is alphabetized as if ‘Beren and Luthien’, and ‘Of the Beginning of Days’ is alphabetized under ‘Beginning’, omitting both ‘Of’ and the definite article.

For the most part, each discrete work by Tolkien, or collection of works, is given a separate article in the Reader’s Guide. But because of the close relationship between Völsungarkviða and Gudrúnarkviða, we have found it convenient to treat them together with, and under the title of, the volume in which they are published, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún; and because Tolkien’s early work The Story of Kullervo is closely related to the Kalevala, we have chosen to deal with the former within the article for the latter (while providing a separate entry for the 2015 volume entitled The Story of Kullervo).

Direct quotations follow their source in spelling and punctuation, but we have silently corrected the occasional misspelled word or other minor error. For all quotations, page references are given whenever possible.

Because of the multiplicity of editions, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are cited only by chapter and by book and chapter, respectively. For these we have quoted from current corrected texts; for most other books by Tolkien, we have used and cited first editions unless otherwise stated. The same is true for Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien (1977) and his book on the Inklings (1978). On Fairy-Stories and Leaf by Niggle, however, have been quoted most often from the edition of Tree and Leaf first published by Unwin Hyman, London, in 1988, or from the expanded edition of 2008. Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics and other works have been quoted most conveniently (as indicated) from The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983). Contributions by Tolkien to books and periodicals, or discrete works by Tolkien otherwise contained in a larger work (for instance, as the Ainulindalë is contained within The Silmarillion), are cited in their separate entries in the Reader’s Guide with inclusive page numbers according to (as a convenient point of reference) the first printing of the first edition.