1966 ‘Tolkien on Tolkien’ Diplomat, Vol. XVIII No. 197, October, p. 39. [Brief account of Tolkien’s life and motives as a writer, taken from statement prepared for his publishers.]
Contribution as translator to The Jerusalem Bible (London, Carton, Longman & Todd; New York, Doubleday). [Tolkien is named as an editor but his only contribution was to make original draft of translation of Book of Jonah, which was extensively revised by other hands before publication.]
The Tolkien Reader (New York, Ballantine Books). [A reprint in one volume of ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth’ ‘On Fairy-Stories’ ‘Leaf by Niggle’ Farmer Giles of Ham and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.]
1967 Smith of Wootton Major (London, George Allen & Unwin). Reprinted. Second edition 1975. New paperback edition 1983. First USA edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin) 1967; second USA edition 1978.
Poem ‘For W. H. A.’ in Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review, Vol. XVIII No. 2, winter, pp. 96–7. [Poem in Anglo-Saxon with modern English translation in honour of sixtieth birthday of W. H. Auden.]
The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle. Poems by J. R. R. Tolkien set to music by Donald Swann (Boston, Houghton Mifflin). First UK edition
(London, George Allen & Unwin) 1968. Reissued New York, Ballantine Books, 1969. Second edition, London, 1978, adding ‘Bilbo’s Last Song’ a new foreword and notes. Second USA edition, Boston, 1978. [At time of first publication, Caedmon Records issued LP (TC 1231) entitled Poems and Songs of Middle Earth, on which William Elvin sings Swann’s settings of Tolkien’s poems, with composer at piano, and Tolkien reads some of his own verse.]
1969 Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham, with illustrations by Pauline Baynes (New York, Ballantine Books). [A reprint in one volume.]
Letter describing origins of Inklings in The Image of Man in C. S. Lewis by William Luther White, pp. 221–2 (Nashville & New York, Abingdon Press). Reprinted in UK by Hodder & Stoughton 1970. Letter reprinted in Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, pp.387–8.
1971 Passage in Attacks of Taste, compiled and edited by Evelyn B. Byrne and Otto M. Penzler, p. 43 (New York, Gotham Book Mart). [Tolkien describes reading habits as young man.]
1972 Letter ‘Beautiful Place because Trees are Loved’ Daily Telegraph, 4 July, p. 16. [About forests in Middle-earth, in response to editorial of 29 June.] Reprinted in Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, pp. 419–20.
Calendar containing Tolkien drawings issued by Ballantine Books. In 1973 Allen & Unwin and Ballantine issued calendars using same illustrations. In 1975, 1976, 1977 and 1978 Allen & Unwin issued calendars using further drawings by Tolkien. Several of the drawings have also been issued as posters and postcards. The calendar art is reprinted in Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1979.
1974 Poem ‘Bilbo’s Last Song’ published in poster form, with decorations by Pauline Baynes (London, George Allen & Unwin). Poem was also published as poster with photographic background by Houghton Mifflin.
1975 ‘Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings’ A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell, pp. 153–201 (La Salle, Illinois, Open Court). [Notes on nomenclature in story, originally written for guidance of translators.]
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo, translated into modern English; edited and with a preface by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin). New paperback editions, London, Unwin Paperbacks, 1979; New York, Ballantine Books, 1980. [During 1975 Caedmon Records issued two LPs (TC 1477 and 1478) on which Tolkien reads from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; these recordings were made by George Sayer at Malvern in August 1952.]
Tree and Leaf, Smith of Wootton Major, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth reprinted in one volume; Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil reprinted in one volume (London, George Allen & Unwin).
Letter in Mythlore, Vol. III No. 2, Whole No. 10, p. 19. [Letter of 17 November 1957 to Dr Herbert Schiro, included in article by Glen Goodknight. Tolkien comments that The Lord of the Rings ‘is about Death and the desire for deathlessness’.] Reprinted in part in Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, p. 262.
1976 The Father Christmas Letters, edited by Baillie Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin).
1977 The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin). Reprinted many times. New paperback edition, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1979; New York, Ballantine Books, 1979. Limited edition 1982. [In 1977 and 1978 Caedmon Records issued two recordings by Christopher Tolkien reading selections from The Silmarillion: Of Beren and Lúthien (TC 1564) and Of the Darkening of Valinor and of the Flight of the Noldor (TC 1579).] Drawings by Tolkien, catalogue of exhibition at Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 14 December 1976–27 February 1977, and at National Book League, London, 2 March-7 April 1977.
1978 Drawing, ‘The Lonely Mountain’ reproduced in The Tolkien Scrapbook, edited by Alida Becker (New York, Grosset & Dunlap), pp. 114–15.
1979 Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, foreword and notes by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin). [A collection of paintings and drawings previously published in calendars and books.]
‘Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford, 5 June 1959’ in J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller, edited by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell (Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press), pp. 16–32.
1980 Poems and Stories (London, George Allen & Unwin). [Reprints with old and new illustrations by Pauline Baynes of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’ ‘On Fairy-Stories’ ‘Leaf by Niggle’ Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major.]
Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin). Reissued in paperback 1982.
1981 Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter with assistance of Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin).
The Old English Exodus, text, translation and commentary by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Joan Turville-Petre (Oxford, Clarendon Press).
1982 Mr Bliss (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin). [Reproduced from Tolkien’s illustrated MS.]
Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode, edited by Alan Bliss (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1983).
1983 The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1984). Translated in part into German (1984). The Book of Lost Tales, Part I, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1984). Reissued in paperback 1985.
1984 The Book of Lost Tales, Part II, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin). Reissued in paperback 1986.
1985 The Lays of Beleriand, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin).
1986 The Shaping of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London, George Allen & Unwin; Boston, Houghton Mifflin).
1987 The Lost Road and Other Writings, edited by Christopher Tolkien (Unwin Hyman Ltd).
1988 The Return of the Shadow, edited by Christopher Tolkien (Unwin Hyman Ltd).
1989 The Treason of Isengard, edited by Christopher Tolkien (Unwin Hyman Ltd).
1990 The War of the Ring, edited by Christopher Tolkien (Unwin Hyman Ltd).
1992 Sauron Defeated, edited by Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd).
1993 Morgoth’s Ring, edited by Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd).
1994 The War of the Jewels, edited by Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd).
1996 The Peoples of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien (HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd).
1998 Roverandom, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond (HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd).
APPENDIX D
Sources and acknowledg
ements
In this book I have quoted J. R. R. Tolkien’s words usually without giving references to the sources of the quotations. Such references would have had to be numerous and therefore (I considered) tiresome to the eye, and since many quotations are taken from unpublished material, references would only have been of very limited interest. I have also eschewed the customary row of dots to indicate a passage omitted in the middle of a quotation; again, these would have had to be numerous and therefore (I believe) irritating without being enlightening. My aim here has been not to interrupt the narrative with what Tolkien himself once called ‘the trail of the passing editor’.
In view of the absence of references, it may be of some interest if I give a brief indication of the nature of my sources. The account of family life in Bloemfontein is based on letters written by Arthur Tolkien to his parents in England. Childhood days at Sarehole and in Birmingham were recalled by J. R. R. Tolkien in manuscript notes and in newspaper and radio interviews. I was also fortunate to be able to meet his brother Hilary Tolkien, who told me much of their early days and corresponded with me at some length while this book was being written. Sadly he did not live to see it completed, for he died early in 1976. The events at Duchess Road were recorded in contemporary letters between Tolkien and Edith Bratt, whom he was later to marry, and their enforced parting was chronicled in a diary that he kept for a brief time at this period. After they had been reunited their correspondence continued until they began a settled married life late in 1918, and the several hundred letters that they wrote to each other during this time were the source of much information about Tolkien’s undergraduate days and his war service. The origins of ‘The T.C.B.S.’ were recounted to me by Christopher Wiseman, whose assistance, encouragement, and friendship have been among the chief delights of my work on the book. Tolkien’s itinerary in France during the First World War was recorded in a cursory diary that he kept at the time, and this together with Major-General J. C. Latter’s History of the Lancashire Fusiliers, 1914–18 (Aldershot, 1949) and John Harris’s The Somme (London, 1966), made it possible for me to construct a detailed picture of his active service. Between 1919 and 1933 Tolkien kept a diary at some length, writing it in his invented alphabets, and this was the principal source of information for my account of this part of his life. For the remaining years I drew chiefly on his correspondence with his family, his friends, his publishers, and readers of his books; and on the diaries kept by him with varying degrees of regularity from 1964 to the end of his life. I have also drawn much on the autobiographical content of his published writings, most notably the essay On Fairy-Stories and the lecture English and Welsh.
The diaries, letters, and other papers were made available to me through the generosity of Professor Tolkien’s sons and daughter, and my greatest debt of gratitude is consequently to them: the Rev. John Tolkien, Michael Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, and Priscilla Tolkien. Moreover they have each of them given me unstintingly of their time and attention; they have discussed their father’s life with me, and commented upon the book in manuscript; and throughout my work on the project they have shown me unfailing kindness, encouragement, and friendship.
Similarly Professor Tolkien’s executors have given me every possible assistance during my work on the book; and they and Messrs George Allen & Unwin have kindly allowed me to quote from Tolkien’s writings, both published and unpublished.
Many people have talked or written about their memories of Professor Tolkien, either to me or to Ann Bonsor, who has generously allowed me to make use of the tape-recordings that she made for a series of radio broadcasts about his life. To these I owe my thanks: Professor Simonne d’Ardenne, Owen Barfield, the late John Bryson, Professor Nevill Coghill, Professor and Mrs Norman Davis, the late Hugo Dyson, Elaine Griffiths, Joy Hill, the late Rev. Gervase Mathew O. P., the Rev. Robert Murray S. J., Mary Salu, Donald Swann, Dr Denis Tolhurst, Baillie Tolkien, Rayner Unwin, the late Milton Waldman, and Dick Williamson. Several of those named have also been kind enough to read the book in manuscript and comment upon it.
My thanks are due to many members of Professor Tolkien’s family other than those already mentioned, for kindness and assistance in many ways. I am also grateful for the loan of family photographs, and for permission to reproduce them.
Many other people have helped me in a number of ways, and my thanks are due to (among others): C. Talbot d’Alessandro, Jonathan Anelay, Sir Basil Blackwell, C. H. C. Blount and Norman Craig of King Edward’s School Birmingham, Alina Dadlez, Professor Glyn Daniel, the Very Rev. Pascall Dillon O. M. I., Charles Furth, Glen and Bonnie Good-Knight, Juliet Grindle, the Rev. Walter Hooper, Guy Kay, Jessica Kemball-Cook, Professor Clyde S. Kilby, the Rev. R. P. Lynch and the Very Rev. C. J. G. Winterton of the Birmingham Oratory, Mr and Mrs Michael Maclagan, A. C. Muffett, Mr and Mrs David Phillips, Oliver Suffield, Graham Tayar, Gwendoline Williams, and the Headmaster of St Philip’s Grammar School Birmingham. Brenda Goodall of Supercopy (Oxford) has given me much assistance with photocopying.
My thanks are due to the executors of the late C. S. Lewis for permission to quote from his letters to Tolkien. Copyright in the letter from W. H. Auden is controlled by the Estate of W. H. Auden.
During my preparations for writing the book I visited Marquette University at Milwaukee in the United States, in whose archives are housed many of the manuscripts of Tolkien’s works of fiction. At Marquette I received much kindness from Paul Gratke, the Rev. Robert Callen S. J., and the Rev. Raphael Hamilton S.J. My thanks are also due to several British libraries: the Bodleian, the library of the Imperial War Museum, Evesham Public Library and its librarian Keith Barber, and the Brotherton Library in the University of Leeds.
I have consulted a number of books which have been of assistance, most notably C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy, The Four Loves, and his collected letters, as well as the biography of Lewis by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper. Other books that have been of service include The Life of Joseph Wright by E. M. Wright (Oxford, 1932), The Rise of English Studies by D. J. Palmer (Oxford, 1965), Tolkien Criticism: An Annotated Checklist by Richard C. West (Kent State University Press), and A Guide to Middle Earth by Robert Foster (New York, 1974). I also owe thanks to many journalists and broadcasters who interviewed Tolkien, and whose interviews I have consulted. I should mention in particular interviews by Keith Brace (Birmingham Post, 25 May 1968). Daphne Castell (Glasgow Herald, 6 August 1966, and Christian Science Monitor, 11 August 1966), William Cater (Daily Express, 22 November 1966, and Sunday Times, 2 January 1972), Don Chapman (‘Anthony Wood’ Oxford Mail, 9 February 1968), John Ezard (Oxford Mail, 3 August 1966), William Foster (The Scotsman, 25 March 1967), Denys Gueroult (Now Read On, BBC Radio 4, 16 December 1970), Philip Norman (Sunday Times, 15 January 1967), Charlotte and Denis Plimmer (Daily Telegraph Magazine, 22 March 1968), and Richard Plotz (Seventeen, 17 January 1967).
I must also add my thanks to members of my family for reading the book in manuscript and making valuable suggestions, and to my wife Mari Prichard, who besides being a constant adviser did much vital work in ‘de-coding’ the diary in invented alphabets that Tolkien kept between 1919 and 1933.
I have already mentioned Christopher Tolkien, but I cannot leave unrecorded my especial debt to him. As his father’s literary executor he was faced with the immense task of ordering The Silmarillion for publication. In the middle of this work he spared innumerable hours to assist me, and made radical and invaluable suggestions which have had a considerable influence on the final shape of this book. Moreover he, his wife Baillie and their children, Adam and Rachel, welcomed me into their house five days a week for almost eight months while I consulted the many papers and manuscripts that were at that time kept under their roof. Thanks to the unfailing warmth of their welcome, my task was made a delight to me.
INDEX
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the se
arch feature of your e-book reader.
Characters and places in Tolkien’s stories are printed in inverted commas. The titles of his works, published and unpublished, will be found indexed under ‘Tolkien, J. R. R.’.
Abercrombie, Lascelles 149
Ace Books 303–6
Ackerman, Forrest J. 301
Ad Eundem Club 339–40
‘Aelfwine’ 225–9
frikaans language 29
gnew, Lady 260 Alice in Wonderland 242
llegory, Tolkien’s attitude to 128–9, 252–3, 270–8, 322–4
llen, George, & Unwin Ltd, see
George Allen & Unwin Ltd alphabets, invented 58, 139, 321
msterdam 300
Ancrene Wisse 159, 181, 185,
188–9, 233, 319
ndersen, Hans 39
nglo-Saxon language 54–5, 70, 73, 89–93, 99–100, 129, 141, 146, 159–60, 178–84 passim, 286
‘Animalic’ 56
polausticks, The 79
riosto 291, 292
Arthurian legends 39, 55, 224–8, 229
ssisi 298
Atlantis 40, 227–8
uden, W. H. 13, 178, 179, 220, 294, 297, 330–1
Babbitt 220, 233
‘Bag End’ origin of name 147, 234 ‘Baggins, Bilbo’ 233ff. and passim ‘Baggins, Frodo’ 136, 248ff. and passim
‘Balin’ 278
Ballantine Books 302–4
Barber, E. A. 80
‘Bard’ 239
Barfield, Owen 152
Barnt Green (Worcs.) 56–7, 88
Barrie, J. M. 71
Battle of Maldon, The 286
Baynes, Pauline 221, 324
Bedford 110
J. R. R. Tolkien Page 31