The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND ABBREVIATIONS

I have incurred many debts in the writing of the three editions of this book, firstly and most importantly from Professor Tolkien himself, for a prompt and salutary correction, as mentioned in the ‘Preface’ below. I hope that over the years I have come to realise and to express some part of what he meant.

This book could further not have been written without the immense assistance of Humphrey Carpenter’s three works, J.R.R. Tolkien: a Biography, The Inklings, and the Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Mr Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien. They have provided a frame for my inquiries, and I have referred to them continually. Both Mr Carpenter and Mr Tolkien furthermore read many hundreds of pages of typescript for the first edition, and corrected many errors, both factual and of interpretation, thoughtfully and magnanimously. Those that remain are my responsibility alone, as is the general trend of this book’s argument, which no adviser, perhaps, could satisfactorily modify. I am much indebted also to the late and much-regretted Rayner Unwin for encouragement without pressure over too long a period; and to Mrs Pam Armitage for typing repeated drafts of the first edition (written before word-processors came into general use) with exemplary care.

Friends and colleagues past and present have provided me with much additional information, in particular, for the first edition, John Bourne, Lesley Burnett, Janet and Malcolm Godden, Tony Green, Constance Hieatt, David Masson and Rory McTurk; while Tolkienists both within and without the Tolkien Society have put me straight on details. I must thank especially Rhona Beare and Jessica Yates for many long letters and contributions, as also Charles Noad and Gary Kuris. For this third edition, I have had yet more assistance, gratefully acknowledged, from Douglas Anderson, David Bratman, Patrick Curry, Charles Noad (again), Carl Hostetter, John Rateliff, and Dan Timmons. Some of these debts are acknowledged more fully in text and notes.

Cornell University Press has kindly permitted me to reproduce in successive editions the substance of my chapter ‘Creation from Philology in The Lord of the Rings’, from J.R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Story-Teller, edited by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, 1979; and also, in this and the second edition, the stemma from Theodore Andersson’s The Legend of Brynhild, 1979, for which I also have to thank Dr Andersson. The University of Turku, Finland, has given the same permission for ‘Tolkien as a Post-War Writer’, in Scholarship and Fantasy: The Tolkien Phenomenon, ed. Keith J. Battarbee, 1993, as have Greenwood Press for ‘Orcs, Wraiths, Wights: Tolkien’s Images of Evil,’ in J.R.R. Tolkien and his Literary Resonances, ed. Dan Timmons and George Clark, 2000, and Houghton Mifflin for ‘Another Road to Middle-earth: Jackson’s Movie Trilogy’, in Understanding The Lord of the Rings, ed. Neil D. Isaacs and Rose Zimbardo, 2004.

I have also to thank Tolkien’s literary executors for permission to translate the four poems in Appendix B. They and HarperCollins have further allowed me to quote freely from all Tolkien’s published works. Thanks are due to the Oxford University Press for permission to quote from the Oxford English Dictionary, and indeed the most courteous deed of all is that of Mr Robert Burchfield, formerly the Dictionary’s General Editor, who gave such permission in spite of all the shafts which Tolkien and I have levelled at the work of his predecessors. It should not need me to say that, whatever additions one can make to it, the OED remains the most useful work any English critic can possess.

When it comes to citation of ancient texts (as in this book it often does) I have not given full references in academic style. Partly this is because they would be useless to the general reader. More forcefully, one can say that there is no subject for which ‘standard editions’ are less relevant than the works of Tolkien. He knew Beowulf, and the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, and the Elder Edda, and Pearl and Sir Gawain and Saxo Grammaticus, a good deal better than most of their editors, even when, as happened occasionally, his earlier self was the editor. It may be taken, then, that ‘standard editions’ have been referred to, and some are cited in Appendix A to this work, but quotations rest on the authority of the original manuscripts, and have sometimes been emended to what I think are the most ‘Tolkienian’ forms. With Old English and Old Norse I have used marks of vowel-length similar to those in The Lord of the Rings, though I have not introduced them to The Hobbit nor to much-mentioned Old English names such as Beowulf (Beowulf). All translations, unless separately acknowledged, are my own.

Abbreviations used in the text and notes are as follows (all works mentioned being by Tolkien himself, unless otherwise stated). Dates of first publication are given as well as editions actually used. Artist Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J.R.R. Tolkien, Artist and Illustrator (London: HarperCollins, 1995) Author Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (London: HarperCollins, 2000). ‘AW’ ‘Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad’, Essays and Studies vol. 14 (1929), pp. 104–26. Bibliography Wayne G. Hammond, with Douglas A. Anderson, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography (St Paul’s Bibliographies: Winchester, 1993; Oak Knoll Books: New Castle, DW, 1993). Biography J.R.R. Tolkien: a Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter (1977; London: HarperCollins, 2002, the latter containing an updated list of Tolkien’s published works). BLT1 The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983). BLT2 The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984). Essays The Monsters and the Critics and other essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983). ‘EW’ ‘English and Welsh’, in Angles and Britons: O’Donnell Lectures (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1963), pp. 1–41. Reprinted in Essays. Exodus The Old English Exodus: Text, Translation and Commentary, edited by Joan Turville-Petre (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981). Finn Finn and Hengest: the Fragment and the Episode, edited by Alan Bliss (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982). Giles Farmer Giles of Ham (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1949). Reprinted in and here cited from Tales. ‘Guide’ ‘Guide to the Names in The Lord of The Rings’ in A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1975), pp. 153–201.

Hobbit The Hobbit: or There and Back Again (1937; cited here from the corrected edition, with ‘Note on the Text’ by Douglas A. Anderson, London: HarperCollins, 2001). ‘Homecoming’ ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son’, Essays and Studies N.S. vol. 6 (1953), pp. 1–18. Reprinted in and here cited from Tree. Inklings The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and their friends, by Humphrey Carpenter (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978). Jewels The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion, Part Two, The Legends of Beleriand, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 1994). Lays The Lays of Beleriand, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985). ‘Leaf’ ‘Leaf by Niggle’, first printed in Dublin Review for Jan. 1945, pp. 46–61. Reprinted in Tree as the second part of ‘Tree and Leaf’, and here cited from there. Legendarium Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter (Greenwood: Westport, CT, 2000). Letters Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien (1981; London: HarperCollins, 1999). Lost Road The Lost Road and other writings: Language and Legend before The Lord of the Rings, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: Unwin Hyman, 1987). LOTR The Lord of the Rings (first printed in three vols., 1954–5, 2nd ed., 1966; cited here from the corrected one-volume edition, with ‘Note on the Text’ by Douglas A. Anderson, London: HarperCollins, 2001, by page, or by book and chapter). Memoriam Essays J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Story-Teller: Essays in Memoriam, edited by Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979). ‘Monsters’ ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics’, Proceedings of the British Academy vol. 22 (1936), pp. 245–95. Reprinted in Essays. MR Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion, Part One, The Legends of Aman, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 1993). OED The Oxford English Dictionary (13 vols, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933 and Supplement in 4 vols, 1972–86). Note that the 13 volumes of 1933 are a reprint of The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, issued in 10 volumes, 1884–1928. ‘OES’ ‘The Oxford English School’, The Oxford Magazine vol. 48, no. 21, 29 May 1930, pp. 778–82. ‘OFS’ ‘On Fairy-Stories’, first printed in Essays presented to Charles Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), pp. 38–89. Reprinted in Essays and, as the first part of ‘Tree and Leaf, in Tree, and here cited from the latter. Peoples The Peoples of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 1996). Pictures Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979; repr. London: HarperCollins, 1991). ‘Preface’ ‘Prefatory Remarks’ to Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment: a Translation into Modern English by J.R. Clark Hall, revised by C.L. Wrenn (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1950), pp. ix-xliii. Reprinted in Essays as ‘On Translating Beowulf’. Road The Road Goes Ever On: a Song Cycle, poems by J.R.R. Tolkien set to music by Donald Swann (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968; repr. London: HarperCollins, 2002). S The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977; repr. London: HarperCollins, 1999). SD Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Four), edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 1992). SGGK Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, edited by J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925). SGPO Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited and with an introduction by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975). Shadow The Return of the Shadow (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One), edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988). Shaping The Shaping of Middle-earth: The Quenta, the Ambarkanta and the Annals, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1986). Smith Smith of Wootton Major (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967). Reprinted in Tales, and here cited from there. Songs Songs for the Philologists, by J.R.R. Tolkien, E.V. Gordon and others (privately printed at the Dept. of English, University College, London, 1936). Tales Tales from the Perilous Realm (London: HarperCollins, 2002). Contains Giles, TB and Smith. TB The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other verses from The Red Book (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962). Reprinted in and cited from Tales. Treason The Treason of lsengard (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Two), edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). Tree Tree and Leaf (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964; repr. London: HarperCollins, 2001: expanded to include ‘Mythopoeia’ and ‘Homecoming’). Contains ‘Homecoming’, with ‘OFS’ and ‘Leaf’ together as ‘Tree and Leaf’. UT Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981; repr. London: HarperCollins, 2000). War The War of the Ring (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Three), edited by Christopher Tolkien (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990). YWES Chapters on ‘Philology, General Works’ in The Year’s Work in English Studies, vols 4–6 for 1923–5. Cited by volume number and page.

For fuller bibliographical details, especially of Tolkien’s many separately-printed poems and learned articles, one should consult the updated list of his published writings in Biography (2000), pp. 353–66, or in further detail in Bibliography.