Addenda and Corrigenda to
The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (2006)
Vol. 2: Reader’s Guide

References to lines or paragraphs are relative to the cited page, not to the named entry. Significant revisions of addenda or corrigenda (as opposed to revisions of the Reader’s Guide proper) are marked thus: [REVISED]. Hyperlinks are included selectively, to lead to further (especially pictorial) material; for additional links, see the supplemental bibliography of sources.

dust-jacket, front flap: The blurb says that this volume includes checklists of Tolkien’s ‘published works, his poetry, his pictorial art, and translations of his writings’. These are actually in vol. 1. We had intended them to be in vol. 2, but the main text of the Reader’s Guide ran long and we had to shift the appendices into vol. 1 instead. By that point, it was too late to alter the jackets. The correct situation is explained in the preface, p. xiii.

p. ix: On the first page of the Preface in the Reader’s Guide (only), the heading was accidentally not lowered, as is customary for opening pages. This resulted in a slight difference in page breaks between the Preface in the Reader’s Guide and the Preface in the Chronology, which were intended to be identical in presentation as well as content.

p. 1, entry for Lascelles Abercrombie: Add after second sentence: ‘Two of his poems, ‘Roses Can Wound’ and ‘“All Last Night . . .”’, appeared in *Leeds University Verse, 1914–1924 (1924), to which Tolkien was also a contributor.’

pp. 1–7, entry for Ace Books controversy: See note below for pp. 191–8.

p. 3, l. 3: For ‘very cheap’ read ‘cheap’.

p. 5, final paragraph, entry for Ace Books controversy: Ace Books’ public relations efforts following their settlement with Tolkien also included an advertisement for their edition of The Lord of the Rings on the final page of John Myers Myers’ Silverlock, published by Ace in 1966. Within its text was the paragraph: ‘By arrangement with Professor Tolkien, these Ace volumes are the only American editions that are paying full royalties directly to the author. They are authentic, complete, unrevised and unabridged.’ This was true, strictly speaking: the Houghton Mifflin and Ballantine editions paid royalties only indirectly to Tolkien, through the chain of American publishers and George Allen & Unwin; the Ace volumes were ‘authentic’ and ‘complete’ in and of themselves; and they were indeed unrevised (compared to the Ballantine edition) and unabridged (there were, and are, no abridged editions in English). It was also misleading and self-serving – and apparently little-noticed at the time.

p. 8, entry for Adaptations: Photographs of the cast of the 1967 Hobbit performed at New College School were reproduced on the bbc website in July 2012, in conjunction with an August broadcast of a recording of the original production.

p. 21, first paragraph, entry for Adaptations: Further details about William Snyder’s film version of The Hobbit are given by artist-animator Gene Deitch in his online book How To Succeed in Animation. Deitch recalls being handed the task of making a feature-length animated Hobbit in 1964, with Snyder’s rights to the property set to expire on 30 June 1966. Deitch and his friend Bill Bernal developed a screenplay in which they ‘introduced a series of songs, changed some of the characters’ names, played loosely with the plot, and even created a girl character, a Princess no less, to go along on the quest, and to eventually overcome Bilbo Baggins’ bachelorhood!’ After The Lord of the Rings appeared in paperback, Deitch ‘back-spaced elements’ from that book into the film script to allow for a sequel. But with Snyder’s option due to expire, and the property having become more valuable due to the explosion of Tolkien’s popularity in the United States, a film had to be produced quickly, and Snyder’s contract with Tolkien and George Allen & Unwin did not specify either the nature of the film or how long it needed to be. To this end, Deitch abandoned his screenplay and produced a twelve-minute film of The Hobbit within a month’s time. This incorporated art by the Czech illustrator Adolf Born, narration by broadcaster Herb Lass, and music by Václav Lidl. On 30 June 1966, the film was shown in a small room in midtown Manhattan to anyone that Deitch could bring in from the street.

pp. 22–3, entry for Adaptations: Russell W. Dalton concludes in ‘Peter Jackson, Evil, and the Temptations of Film at the Crack of Doom’, in the collection Light beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work (2011), that ‘although Tolkien’s climactic ending (at the Black Gate and on Mount Doom) emphasizes Boethian themes of mercy, forgiveness. and providence, the features on the Extended Edition DVD reveal that Jackson’s planned changes served to minimize these themes and instead emphasized Manichaean motifs, with both Aragorn and Frodo killing their enemies, the evil ones, in hand-to-hand battle’ (p. 178). Even in the theatrical version, both Frodo and Gollum fall while struggling, but Frodo manages to hang on to a ledge.

p. 23, entry for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil: Later editions of the Reader’s Companion correctly include the fifth verse of the Oxford Magazine version. This version has been reprinted also in the expanded edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 123–30. Line 6 from bottom, for ‘these were not written down’ read ‘only one brief fragment appears to have been written down, or to survive’. The fragment has been published in the expanded edition of the Bombadil collection, pp. 277–8.

pp. 25–8, entry for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book: An expanded edition, edited and with commentary by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, was published by HarperCollins, London, in 2014. This includes earlier versions of those poems that had earlier published versions (i.e. those poems not original to the collection), one of the manuscript versions of the previously unpublished poem The Bumpus (precursor of Perry-the-Winkle), and the previously unpublished fragment of a prose story about Tom Bombadil. The volume also reprints the later Tom Bombadil poem Once upon a Time and relates it to *An Evening in Tavrobel. The original illustrations by Pauline Baynes are reprinted, together with later art by Baynes for the collection as published in Poems and Stories, and calligraphic treatments by Tolkien from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Errantry.

p. 26, ll. 8–9 from bottom, entry for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book: In addition to The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late and Oliphaunt, The Stone Troll was also reprinted from The Lord of the Rings.

p. 27, third paragraph, entry for The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book: When the order of the two poems was reversed, the full-page illustration for Cat was correctly associated with that poem, but a two-colour illustration for Fastitocalon was moved to the side of a sheet which (as an economy measure) was not printed in two colours, thereby omitting the orange flames of a campfire.

p. 28, l. 8: For ‘Ae Adar Nín: The Lord’s Prayer in Sindarin’ read ‘‘Ae Adar Nín’’.

p. 28, l. 9: For ‘into Sindarin (*Languages, Invented)’ read ‘into Sindarin (*Languages, Invented) of the Lord’s Prayer’.

pp. 28–32, entry for Ainulindalë: In his The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision behind The Lord of the Rings (2005) Stratford Caldecott asserts that ‘Tolkien drew upon many legends that were known to him, and upon the Jewish and Christian traditions that he believed to be true. He was trying to write an account that would be complementary to, while not contradicting, the Genesis story. . . . For Tolkien, as a Catholic, God is the Creator of the World ex nihilo (“out of nothing”)’ (p. 71).

Jonathan McIntosh in ‘Ainulindalë: Tolkien, St. Thomas, and the Metaphysics of the Music’, in the collection Music in Middle-earth (2010), rejects earlier interpretations of the Ainulindalë, especially, in his opinion, ‘the marked tendency in the Tolkien literature to read his creation-drama and the Music of the Ainur in particular in terms of the emanationist logic of the Neoplatonic philosophy. On this understanding, later stages of the creation-process and world-history are seen as metaphysically inferior to, and thus a “tragic” falling away from the supposedly more authentic and pure reality represented by the primeval Music.’ Instead, he argues that ‘the Ainur’s Music – along with the oft neglected . . . image . . .  [of] the Vision of the Ainur – give mythic expression to the much more positive, comic, or rather “eucatastrophic” metaphysics of creation Tolkien inherited and adapted from his greater Catholic theological forbear, St. Thomas Aquinas’ (p. 53).

p. 34, l. 1: For ‘Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun: The Gloria in Excelsis Deo in Quenya’ read ‘Alcar mi Tarmenel na Erun’.

p. 38, bottom–p. 39, top: For ‘are sensible’ read ‘as sensible’.

p. 41, l. 19: For ‘The Alphabet of Rúmil’ read ‘‘The Alphabet of Rúmil’’.

p. 43, add entry:

pp. 44–9, entry for Ancrene Riwle: Arne Zettersten states, in ‘Discussing Language with J.R.R. Tolkien’, Lembas Extra (2007), that Tolkien gave him ‘splendid advice on the Magdalene College [manuscript] of the Ancrene Wisse’ (p. 21) which Zettersten edited in 1976.

pp. 52–3, entry for Appearance: Desmond Albrow recalled (‘A Brush with Greatness’, Catholic Herald, 31 January 1997) his first meeting with Tolkien at the latter’s home in 1943, when Albrow was an eighteen-year-old student at Oxford. Tolkien ‘was the first Oxford professor that I had ever met face to face and the delightful fact was that he had behaved to me like a true scholar-gentleman.’ ‘Here’, Albrow thought,

Adele Vincent, a student at Oxford in the mid-1950s who heard Tolkien lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, described his appearance thus: ‘He was a robust-looking man, with a kindly face. . . . He wore dull, academic tweeds rather than the brightly colored clothes that the Hobbits favored and he was quite a bit taller than they were. . . . Like the Hobbits he smoked a pipe and like them, too, he wore life lightly, enjoying a jest, scorning pedantry’ (‘Tolkien, Master of Fantasy’, Courier-Journal & Times (Louisville, Kentucky), 9 September 1973, reproduced in Authors in the News, vol. 1 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1976)).

For photographs of Tolkien as a young man, see also the J.R.R. Tolkien pages of the Birmingham City Council website.

pp. 53–5, entry for Art: See also The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2011).

p. 55, ll. 4–5: For ‘Tolkien and the Silmarillion’ read ‘Tolkien & the Silmarillion’. The ampersand is used within the book and on its covers.

p. 56, add entry:

pp. 56–60, entry for Arthur and the Matter of Britain: Tolkien also argued in On Fairy-Stories that it seemed ‘fairly plain that Arthur, once historical (but perhaps as such not of great importance), was also put into the Pot’, that is, the ‘Cauldron of Story’ as Tolkien calls it. ‘There he was boiled for a long time, together with many other older figures and devices, of mythology and Faërie, and even some other stray bones of history (such as Alfred’s defence against the Danes), until he emerged as a King of Faërie’ (p. 30).

See further, comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), especially ch. 5. For a lengthy discussion of Gandalf in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings relative to Merlin in Arthurian tales, see Frank P. Riga, ‘Gandalf and Merlin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Adoption and Transformation of a Literary Tradition’, Mythlore 27, nos. 1/2, whole nos. 103/104 (Fall/Winter 2008).

Alex Lewis and Elizabeth Currie explore Arthurian sources for Tolkien’s story of ‘Beren and Lúthien’ in The Epic Realm of Tolkien, Part One (2009). As Carl Phelpstead has remarked, however, although ‘Lewis and Currie demonstrate a wide knowledge’ of relevant texts,

In our eagerness to discuss primarily the influence of Arthurian literature in the context of Tolkien’s fiction, we neglected to refer adequately to his edition (with E.V. Gordon) of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925), the story of a knight of King Arthur’s court. Tolkien and Gordon describe it as

And although we do refer to Arthurian elements in Farmer Giles of Ham, we might have said also that our notes to the fiftieth anniversary edition of that book (1999) point more specifically to allusions to the Arthur legends, in particular the Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

pp. 60–6, entry for Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth: See further, Renée Vink, ‘The Wise Woman’s Gospel’, Lembas-extra 2004 (2004).

pp. 72–4, entry for Arthur Owen Barfield [REVISED]: In an interview conducted in September 1991 Barfield was asked how far he knew Tolkien. ‘I didn’t know him very well’, he replied. ‘I met him a number of times at meetings of the Inklings – I didn’t go always – and also with Lewis. Once we had a short walking tour, Lewis, Tolkien, and I, just when the [Second World] war was threatening, but then we never talked as we [Barfield and the interviewer] are talking now. And I never became an enthusiast for The Lord of the Rings.’ In response to the interviewer’s comment that he ‘got stuck on page 337’ of The Lord of the Rings, Barfield stated that he didn’t think that he ‘got quite as far as that’, but he ‘got The Hobbit, read it to my son’ (p. 30). See further, Elmar Schenkel, ‘Interview mit Owen Barfield’, Inklings Jahrbuch für Literatur und Ästhetik 11 (1993), pp. 23–38. – See also Simon Blaxland-de Lange, Owen Barfield: Romanticism Come of Age: A Biography (2006). On p. 54, Barfield is quoted as writing to novelist Saul Bellow: ‘I did get hold of [Bellow’s novel] Humboldt’s Gift and may as well confess that I couldn’t get up enough interest in enough of what was going on to be held by it. If it’s any comfort to you . . . I had very much the same experience with the Lord of the Rings.’

A catalogue of the papers of Owen Barfield held by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, compiled by C. Parker, is available online. Listed among those with shelfmark Dep. c. 1104, fols. 5–12, are ‘spoof exam questions for the College of Cretaceous Perambulators, written by J.R.R. Tolkien, in pencil; a second set of spoof exam questions, typed, with manuscript answers by C.S. Lewis, Apr. 1938’. The description is not clear as to whether Tolkien’s spoof questions date to April 1938, or only those by Lewis. The name ‘Cretaceous Perambulators’ refers to Lewis, Barfield, and friends who were fond of long walks, ‘Cretaceous’ presumably because their walks sometimes took them onto the chalk downs of southern England.

On Barfield in general, see further, David Lavery, the owen barfield world wide website, and the website of the owen barfield society. The latter includes Jane W. Hipolito, ‘Bibliography of the Published Writings of Owen Barfield, 1917–2010’. The Owen Barfield literary estate also has a website, which includes photographs of Barfield, links to videos, etc.

p. 74, l. 13 from bottom, entry for Thomas Kenneth Barnsley: For ‘d. 1917’ read ‘1891–1917’. Barnsley entered King Edward’s School in January 1908.

p. 75, l. 17: For ‘Barrowclough, Sidney’ read ‘Barrowclough, Sidney (b. 1894)’. Barrowclough entered King Edward’s School in March 1905.

p. 76, l. 11: For ‘b. 1922’ read ‘1922–2008’.

p. 76, l. 12 from bottom, entry for Pauline Diana Baynes: As noted in Chronology, entry for 20 December 1949, Tolkien wrote to Baynes that he had at that time (not long after Farmer Giles of Ham) ‘two (large) books of mythical, legendary, or elvish kind’ which he expected to go into production the following year, and he hoped that Baynes could provide ‘some illustration or decorations’. These were of course ‘The Silmarillion’ as well as The Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien felt should be published together. Baynes understood his request to be for headpieces and pictures to appear in margins, and was willing to produce them

p. 77, l. 11: For ‘objected only’ read ‘criticized a few details, and in particular’.

p. 77, l. 15: For ‘(1974)’ read ‘(1971)’.

p. 79, l. 3 from bottom: For ‘sat night’ read ‘sat nigh’.

pp. 82–3, entry for Belgium: See further, Johan Vanhecke, ‘Tolkien and Belgium’, Lembas Extra (2007), pp. 51–62.

pp. 83–4, entry for Jack Arthur Walter Bennett: A collection of J.A.W. Bennett’s essays, The Humane Medievalist and Other Essays in English Literature and Learning, from Chaucer to Eliot, was published in 1982. See further, ‘A List of the Published Writings of J.A.W. Bennett’ by P.L. Heyworth in Medieval Studies for J.A.W. Bennett (1981).

p. 85, ll. 2–3: For ‘1926; neither, however, was ever finished’ read ‘1926 but never finished’.

p. 85, l. 10: For ‘verse translation’ read ‘prose translation’.

p. 85, second paragraph, entry for Beowulf: The revision of Clark Hall’s translation was suggested to Allen & Unwin by Tolkien’s student Elaine Griffiths, who also suggested Tolkien as its editor. In his turn, Tolkien nominated Griffiths to do the work under his supervision, while he himself would prepare a preface or introduction; but Griffiths proved unable to complete the task, and only after much delay did he produce his Prefatory Remarks (as we explain at greater length in our entry for the latter, but should have said something more in the present entry).

p. 86, l. 13: For ‘saw’ read ‘read’.

p. 86, l. 16: In the quotation ‘hringboga heorte gefysed’ the three instances of ‘g’ should be rendered with the Anglo-Saxon yogh.

pp. 101–4, entry for ‘Of Beren and Lúthien’: Randel Helms briefly discusses the development of the Beren and Lúthien story in his Tolkien and the Silmarils (1981), arguing that ‘its chief written source’ is the tale of ‘Culwch and Olwen’ in The Mabinogion (p. 15). Granted, as Carl Phelpstead does in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), that ‘Tolkien’s use of Culhwch and Olwen seems incontrovertible’ (p. 73), Helms’s assertion is perhaps too bold, considering the number of other possible sources, not to mention original invention by Tolkien. Alex Lewis and Elizabeth Currie explore sources for ‘Beren and Lúthien’ at greater length in The Epic Realm of Tolkien, Part One (2009); but see our addendum to Arthur and the Matter of Britain, above.

p. 108, final paragraph, entry for Biographies: The autobiographical statement that Tolkien prepared for Houghton Mifflin in 1955 evidently had no, or little, relationship to Harvey Breit’s inquiry and subsequent jumbled publication of Tolkien’s reply. Rather, it was written in response to a request for biographical material on Tolkien by the critic Gilbert Highet, forwarded by Houghton Mifflin, who apparently also desired a text which could be used by them for publicity purposes. Tolkien seems to have been asked for something bright, brief, and quotable (compare Tolkien’s words at the end of his letter of 30 June 1955, Letters, p. 220). In Letters, p. 218, Humphrey Carpenter quotes Tolkien as having supplied the material ‘out of sheet pity [for another enquirer wanting information]’, i.e. other than Harvey Breit.

pp. 110–11, entry for Biographies: In his review of the Companion and Guide, John Garth criticized us for not having made ‘more reference . . . to Daniel Grotta’s deeply flawed biography of Tolkien, notably on matters where Grotta (and no one since) had access to the letters of Tolkien’s American undergraduate friend Allen Barnett’ (Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), p. 265). Garth himself, in fact, does not cite Grotta in his Tolkien and the Great War (2003), which has much to do with Tolkien as an undergraduate, and uses Grotta only briefly in his essay ‘Tolkien, Exeter College and the Great War’ (published in print 2008), with the note that ‘while Grotta’s book is far from reliable, his quotations from Barnett’s papers provide a glimpse of Tolkien’s Exeter College experiences and friendships that is absent from Carpenter’s Biography’ (in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration, ed. Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger (2008), p. 19). But Grotta’s reliability is so frequently called into question, as we observe in the Reader’s Guide, that it did not seem safe to trust his transcriptions any more than his facts. If we had, we would have cited two letters from Tolkien to Barnett quoted by Grotta and given precise dates (20 October 1946 and 21 December 1947), among several other, undated quotations. One passage attributed by Grotta to Tolkien, said to survive ‘in a typewritten letter that he sent to Allen Barnett’ and used by Grotta to illustrate Tolkien’s ‘schoolboy wit’ as an Oxford undergraduate, is almost certainly not by Tolkien: the long gloves/underwear joke on pp. 37–8 (first edition; pp. 42–3 later editions). In content and style, it is unlike any demonstrably early correspondence by Tolkien we have read, and includes distinctly American usages. Variants of this text in fact appear to have been in common circulation, perhaps since the late nineteenth century.

pp. 111–12, entry for Biographies: Carpenter’s own (not always favourable) views about his biography of Tolkien may be found in ‘Learning about Ourselves: Biography as Autobiography’, a conversation with Lyndall Gordon, in The Art of Literary Biography, ed. John Batchelor (1995), pp. 270–2, and probably in one paragraph – the subject may be reasonably inferred – of his ‘Lives Lived between the Lines’ in the Times Saturday Review (London), 27 February 1993.

p. 112, l. 17 from bottom: For ‘in present volume’ read ‘in the present volume’.

p. 113, ll. 12–13, entry for Biographies: David R. Collins’ biography was made over in 2005 as J.R.R. Tolkien, significantly shortened and simplified, cluttered with inane sidebars (‘It’s a Fact!’) and injected with references to the Jackson films. Our comment that ‘Collins’ account is to be preferred for balance and accuracy’ could not apply to the later version.

p. 115–17, entry for Birmingham and environs: Additional resources for Tolkien’s Birmingham are Robert S. Blackham, The Roots of Tolkien’s Middle Earth (2006; see also his ‘Tolkien’s Birmingham’, Mallorn 45 (Spring 2008)); Michael Byrne, compiler, Hall Green (1996); Martin Hampson, compiler, Edgbaston (1999); and Christine Ward-Penny, Catholics in Birmingham (2004).

p. 116, entry for Birmingham and environs: A bird’s eye view of Edgbaston is provided on this page of the Birmingham City Council website.

p. 119, add entry:

p. 137, l. 3: For ‘Soon’ ’ read ‘Soon’.

pp. 141–2, substitute for entry on the Brookes-Smith family:

p. 142, add entry:

pp. 147–8, entry for Edward Christian David Gascoyne Cecil: See further, David Cecil: A Portrait by His Friends, edited by Hannah Cranborne (1990), and Essays and Poems Presented to Lord David Cecil, edited by W.W. Robson (1970).

pp. 148–52, entry for Celtic influences: See further, Dimitra Fimi, ‘Tolkien’s “‘Celtic’ Type of Legends”: Merging Traditions’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007); and comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011). Phelpstead quotes, pp. 11 and 61, briefly from Tolkien’s unpublished translation of approximately the first fifth of ‘Pwyll, Prince of Dyved’, the first tale in the Mabinogion:

On p. 15 of Tolkien and Wales, Phelpstead quotes from ‘what seems to be draft material’ for Tolkien’s 1929 lecture, Celts and Teutons in the Early World (see Chronology, p. 148), which we should have mentioned in Celtic influences.

See also our article Arthur and the Matter of Britain.

p. 148, l. 4 from bottom: For ‘(1877), acquired on 9 May 1907’ read ‘(1877)’.

p. 149, l. 19: For ‘Kilhwch’ read ‘Kilhwch (i.e. Culhwch)’.

p. 152, entry for Raymond Wilson Chambers: See also paragraphs on Chambers in Tom Shippey, ‘Scholars of Medieval Literature, Influence of’,  J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006).

p. 152, l. 21: For ‘Exeter Book’ read ‘tenth-century Exeter Book’.

p. 153, l. 24: As a point of internal style, delete the ‘(1992)’ following ‘The Tolkien Family Album’.

pp. 156–7, entry for Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale [REVISED]: Tolkien’s essay has been reprinted in Tolkien Studies 5 (2008). Its text ‘incorporates a small number of corrections and revisions, as well as a few marginal notations . . . taken from Tolkien’s own copies of the original publication’, all supplied to the journal by Christopher Tolkien.

Jill Fitzgerald, in ‘A “Clerkes Compleinte”: Tolkien and the Division of Lit. and Lang.’, Tolkien Studies 6 (2009), aims to set ‘Tolkien’s lecture within his professional context at the time of its delivery and . . . [to examine] the role Chaucer played in Tolkien’s scholarly and creative works’ (p. 41).

p. 158, l. 6, entry for Cheltenham (Gloucestershire): For ‘Probably in late September 1917’ read ‘By 24 August 1917’. Edith Tolkien’s address was 37 Montpellier Villas through 11 September 1917. From 12 September through at least 15 October 1917, she was at 6 Royal Well Terrace.

pp. 160–3, entry for Children: Michael Tolkien recalled that his father ‘possessed the ability, rare in fathers of exceptional talent, or perhaps an ability even rare in the average, of combining fatherhood with friendship’. Tolkien was ‘the only “grown-up” who appeared to take [Michael’s] childish comments and questions with complete seriousness. Whatever interested me seemed invariably to interest him more, even my earliest efforts to talk’, which were recorded in a notebook. Bedtime stories were not read from a book, but told, which was ‘infinitely more exciting and much funnier than anything read from the children’s books of that time’. Tolkien ‘was not a super-human father, and often found his children insufferably irritating, self-opinionated, foolish and even on occasions totally incomprehensible. But he never lost the ability to talk to and not at or down to his children.’ He introduced Michael to colleagues as ‘the great expert on steam engines’, with neither patronage or sarcasm, so that ‘the immediate effect’ on Michael ‘was to try to become a genuine expert’ (Michael Tolkien, ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: The Wizard Father’, Sunday Telegraph, 9 September 1973).

p. 162, l. 9: For ‘Tolkien he produced’ read ‘Tolkien produced’.

p. 163, entry for Children: On the subject of Tolkien’s relationship with his grandson Simon, see further, Simon Tolkien, ‘My Grandfather’, The Mail on Sunday, 23 February 2003, reprinted on the author’s website.

p. 171, l. 8 from bottom: For ‘that’ read ‘than’.

p. 173, l. 6 from bottom: For ‘first taught Latin’ read ‘first taught Latin (*Languages)’.

pp. 173–6, entry for Classical influences: On Classical elements discerned in Tolkien’s writings, see also: Judy A. Ford, ‘The White City: The Lord of the Rings as an Early Medieval Myth of the Restoration of the Roman Empire’, Tolkien Studies 2 (2005); Charles A. Huttar, ‘Tolkien, Epic Traditions, and Golden Age Myths’, in Twentieth-Century Fantasists: Essays on Culture, Society, and Belief in Twentieth-Century Mythopoeic Literature (1992); and L.J. Swain, ‘Latin Literature’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006). An increasing number of critics are exploring perceived Classical analogues to Tolkien’s writings, e.g. Miryam Librán-Moreno in ‘Greek and Latin Amatory Motifs in Éowyn’s Portrayal’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), and ‘Parallel Lives: The Sons of Denethor and the Sons of Telamon’, Tolkien Studies 2 (2005).

p. 174, l. 10 from bottom: For ‘prophecy’ read ‘prophesy’.

pp. 176–7, entry for The Clerke’s Compleinte: The initials ‘N.N.’ alternatively might stand for the Latin ‘Nomen Nescio’ or perhaps ‘Nullo Nomine’. The poem has been reprinted also in Tolkien Studies 6 (2009), pp. 49–51.

p. 177, add entry:

pp. 177–8, entry for Nevill Henry Kendal Aylmer Coghill: A photograph of Coghill was reproduced in Frances Cairncross, ed., Exeter College: The First 700 Years (2013), p. 88.

p. 190, add entry:

pp. 190–1, entry for William Alexander Craigie: Also see further, J.S. Ryan, ‘Trolls and Other Themes: William Craigie’s Significant Folkloric Influence on the Style of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit’ in his Tolkien’s View: Windows into his World (2009).

pp. 191–8, entry for Criticism: Another important essay to cite under this heading, not known to us until after our book went to press, is ‘Middle America Meets Middle-Earth: American Discussion and Readership of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, 1965–1969’ by Joseph Ripp, in the journal Book History (2005). Ripp also discusses the Ace Books affair at length.

Brian Rosebury, in ‘Tolkien Scholarship: An Overview’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), divides Tolkien criticism into four phases. First came book reviews, ‘above all those of The Lord of the Rings’, which ‘whether enraptured or dismissive . . . and the explanations and rebuttals they immediately prompted . . . set the agenda for much subsequent controversy’. The second phase coincided with the ‘Tolkien cult’ in the 1960s and the reaction to it, and was concerned to evaluate Tolkien’s ‘claims as a literary artist’. The third phase included the publication of Shippey’s Road to Middle-earth, which ‘decisively changed the direction of much Tolkien criticism, by insisting . . . on approaching Tolkien’s writings from Tolkien’s point of view’, and writings by Humphrey Carpenter. The fourth, most recent phase is notable for its diversity and scale, in part inspired by the success of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings’ (p. 653).

See also Patrick Curry, ‘The Critical Response to Tolkien’s Fiction’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).

p. 195, l. 17 from bottom: For ‘ed. by’ read ‘edited by’.

pp. 199–200, entry for Colin Cullis: Before going up to Oxford, Cullis attended Dulwich College. He was awarded a scholarship to Exeter College of £80 on the Foundation of King Charles I.

pp. 202–4, entry for Simonne Rosalie Thérèse Odile d’Ardenne [REVISED]: See further, Juliette de Caluwé-Dor, ‘Bibliographie de S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne’, Revue des langues vivantes 35 (1969); Eric Schweicher, J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lyf So Short, the Craft So Long to Lerne (1992); and Johan Vanhecke, ‘Tolkien and Belgium’, Lembas Extra (2007).

p. 204, l. 6: For ‘*The Silmarillion’ read ‘*The Silmarillion (1977)’.

p. 213, l. 18: For ‘13 November’ read ‘16 November’.

p. 214, entry for Doworst: A reproduction of part of the first page of the manuscript, a description and partial transcription of the poem, and a reproduction and transcription of Tolkien’s letter of 21 December 1933 presenting the manuscript to R.W. Chambers were published in the article ‘Fantasy That!: A Tolkien Original’ in the Monash Review, issue no. 3 for 1975 (July), p. 2. According to Professor Brown, then the owner of the manuscript, Tolkien had the manuscript specially bound ‘in a hard, vellum cover’ by Douglas Cockerell & Son of Letchworth, Hertfordshire, with the title and author’s name stamped in gold on the cover, the whole of which is enclosed in a custom slipcase covered with a Cockerell marbled paper. It seems possible, however, that the work was commissioned by Chambers or Winifred Husbands rather than by Tolkien.

p. 218, ll. 18–19 from bottom: For ‘after he discovers’ read ‘after Smaug discovers’.

p. 218, l. 12 from bottom: For ‘Fafnir’ read ‘Fáfnir’.

p. 221, ll. 1, 4, 5: For ‘Fafnir’ read ‘Fáfnir’.

p. 232, ll. 17–20, entry for Henry Victor Dyson Dyson: According to Christopher Tolkien in private correspondence, neither Dyson nor anyone else present at an Inklings meeting would have used this particular expletive. Dyson was, however, loud of voice and personality, and did complain about The Lord of the Rings.

p. 233, l. 19: For ‘Exeter Book’ read ‘Exeter Book’.

p. 233, l. 25: For ‘(p. 64’ read ‘(p. 64)’ (with added parenthesis).

pp. 233–4, entry for Éalá Éarendel Engla Beorhtast: John Garth, drawing upon a thought by *Hugh Brogan, has suggested that the poem closely echoes the metre and rhyme scheme of ‘Arethusa’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

p. 234, l. 8: For ‘with his friends the *Brookes-Smith family’ read ‘with his *Aunt Jane Neave and the *Brookes-Smith family’.

p. 234, entry for Earendel at the Helm: Two versions of the Qenya Earendel, and accompanying English translations, were published as ‘Earendel’ in Parma Eldalamberon 16 (2006), pp. 98–104, with detailed discussion and notes by Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, and Carl F. Hostetter. Both Qenya texts and the second English text (the first in verse) are close to the versions Tolkien included in A Secret Vice, and the lack of development suggests that they were written for the essay (?1931) or close to its writing in time.

p. 240, ll. 6–7: For ‘Fëanor’s seven sons appear in some outlines for the later, unfinished tales’ read ‘Fëanor’s seven sons are named in The Nauglafring: The Necklace of the Dwarves and appear in some outlines for unfinished tales’.

pp. 242–3, entry for Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals: We should have made it clear that ‘Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals and Related Writings’ was a continuing feature of Vinyar Tengwar; three instalments have been published to date (April 2012), two of which were covered in the Reader’s Guide: besides the present title, see the entries for ‘Synopsis of Pengoloð’s Eldarinwe Leperi are Notessi’ and ‘Variation D/L in Common Eldarin’. Strictly speaking, ‘The Problem of Lhûn’, described with ‘Variation D/L in Common Eldarin’, as a separate manuscript should have had a separate entry.

p. 243, entry for Elvish Song in Rivendell: On the dating of this poem, see our comment for Shadow-Bride in the addendum for p. 884, below.

pp. 244–8, entry for England: On Tolkien’s identification with England, see further, comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), ch. 7.

p. 245, l. 6: For ‘12 December’ read ‘25 December’.

p. 248, entry for English and Medieval Studies . . .: The volume includes: ‘A Short Ode to a Philologist’ by *W.H. Auden; ‘The Old English Epic Style’ by *Alistair Campbell; ‘The Appreciation of Old English Metre’ by *A.J. Bliss; ‘King Alfred’s Last War’ by *M.E. Griffiths; ‘Six Questions of Old and Middle English Morphology’ by C.E. Bazell; ‘Studies in Late West-Saxon Labialization and Delabialization’ by Pamela Gradon; ‘The Bodmer Fragment of Ælfric’s Homily for Septuagesima Sunday’ by *N.R. Ker; ‘A Neglected Manuscript of British History’ by *S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne; ‘Ormulum: Words Copied by Jan van Vliet from Parts Now Lost’ by *R.W. Burchfield; ‘Alliterative Phrases in the Ormulum: Some Norse Parallels’ by E.S. Olszewska; ‘The Affiliations of the Manuscripts of Ancrene Wisse’ by *E.J. Dobson; ‘God and Man in Troilus and Criseyde’ by T.P. Dunning; ‘Chaucer’s Translation of the Bible’ by *W. Meredith Thompson; ‘God’s Wenches and the Light That Spoke (Some Notes on Langland’s Kind of Poetry)’ by *Nevill Coghill; ‘The Anthropological Approach’ by *C.S. Lewis; ‘The Textual Transmission of the Alliterative Morte Arthure’ by Angus McIntosh; ‘Thurstable’ by *G. Turville-Petre; ‘Art and Tradition in Skírnismál’ by Ursula Dronke; ‘Two Sixteenth-Century Editions of The Life of St Catharine of Alexandria’ by Auvo Kurvinen; ‘Climates of Opinions’ by *J.A.W. Bennett; ‘Magic in an Anglo-Saxon Cemetery’ by C.L. Wrenn; and ‘Man and Monsters at Sutton Hoo’ by Norman Davis.

pp. 248–50, entry for English and Welsh: See further, comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011). Phelpstead quotes very briefly from the manuscript of English and Welsh on p. 127, n. 76.

p. 249, l. 6, entry for English and Welsh: In regard to the comment ‘that cellar door is “beautiful”’, Grant Barrett, writing on language in the New York Times (‘Cellar Door’, 14 February 2010), notes Tolkien’s use but also that other authors have included the phrase, in a similar context, at least as early as 1903.

p. 251, l. 25: For ‘Cadets’ read ‘cadets’.

p. 253, add entry:

pp. 262–4, entry for Errantry: The Oxford Magazine version was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 155–9.

John D. Rateliff has noted an ‘obvious parallel’ between the rhyming-formulas of Errantry and Chaucer’s ‘Tale of Sir Topas’ in the Canterbury Tales (‘J.R.R. Tolkien: “Sir Topas” Revisited’, Notes and Queries 29, no. 4 (August 1982), p. 348). Jason Fisher in three blog posts (September–November 2008) amplifies this association, and suggests similarities as well with Michael Drayton’s Nymphidia (1627).

pp. 268–9, entry for An Evening in Tavrobel: The poem was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 284–5, in connection with *Once upon a Time.

p. 272: Add cross-reference: Exodus, Old English see The Old English Exodus.

p. 278, l. 3 from bottom: For ‘1926’ read ‘1986’.

p. 285, second paragraph from bottom, entry for Fandom: The period of widespread popularity of The Lord of the Rings in the United States, encouraged by the Ace Books controversy, is often referred to as the ‘campus cult’ of Tolkien, due to the number of fans at colleges and universities (though it was by no means confined to campuses).

pp. 294–5, entry for Lewis Richard Farnell: Farnell figures prominently in the history edited by Frances Cairncross, Exeter College: The First 700 Years (2013). ‘He was severe, earnest and high-principled’ (p. 108), ‘a key figure in raising the College’s, and indeed the University’s, academic performance’ (p. 73). He ‘worked on the introduction of research degrees’ and ‘on the creation of the English School, which involved a long battle with the forces of conservatism’ (p. 73), but also opposed the admission of women to membership in the University. In 1916 he was so affected by the deaths of Exeter College students in the First World War that he had a nervous breakdown.

pp. 295–7, entry for Fastitocalon: The precursor to this poem, with the same title, was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 224–7.

p. 295, ll. 1–2 at bottom: For ‘probably not long before its publication’ read ‘probably in the 1920s’.

p. 296, ll. 3–5: For ‘bestiary, in particular the Physiologus (‘Naturalist’) poems in the Exeter Book, which describe the characteristics of animals and draw from them Christian morals’ read ‘bestiary, which describes the characteristics of animals and draws from them Christian morals. This, in turn, was based on earlier sources, including the ?second-century compilation entitled Physiologus (‘Naturalist’)’.

p. 297, add entry:

p. 297, entry for The ‘Father Christmas’ letters: Line 20, for ‘as well as size’, read ‘as well as size. A HarperCollins trade paperback edition of 2009 restored most of the items omitted from the 2004 edition, and added four further reproductions of pages of manuscript.’ Line 23, for ‘chapter 3’ read ‘chapter 3, and Christina Scull, ‘The “Father Christmas” Letters’, Tolkien Collector 31 (December 2010)’.

p. 311, ll. 4–5: Delete redundant ‘without dispute’.

p. 312, add entry:

pp. 324–33, entry for Free will and Fate: Following Splintered Light, Verlyn Flieger returned to the topic in ‘The Music and the Task: Fate and Free Will in Middle-earth’, Tolkien Studies 6 (2009), incorporating previously unpublished comments by Tolkien (see new entry for Fate and Free Will, above). In Flieger’s view, there exists in Tolkien’s mythology (including The Lord of the Rings) a system of fate and free will which is ‘so at odds with itself, so cross-grained and contrary that nobody wants to see it, much less accept it’ (p. 153); and having accepted that this is so, she proceeds to explain strategic, personal, and sub-creative reasons why Tolkien devised it. Her complex argument, which hinges particularly on the meaning of words such as fate, will, shall, and must as used by Tolkien (according to Flieger’s strict interpretation of his use), proved controversial when presented at two gatherings attended by the present authors. The issue is further explored by Thomas Fornet-Ponse in ‘“Strange and Free”: On Some Aspects of the Nature of Elves and Men’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010) (though we are not at all clear what we are supposed to be ‘assuming’ in the Reader’s Guide, according to his note 4); see also his earlier ‘Freedom and Providence as Anti-Modern Elements?’ in Tolkien and Modernity 1 (2006).

pp. 334–5, entry for Gedling (Nottinghamshire): See further, Andrew H. Morton and John Hayes, Tolkien’s Gedling (2008), which includes photographs of the Gedling farms and the surrounding area.

p. 334, penultimate paragraph, entry for Gedling (Nottinghamshire): For ‘Apparently early in 1913 . . . occasional visitor’ read:

Another, undated drawing by Tolkien is Lamb’s Farm, Gedling, Notts (reproduced in Sotheby’s, English Literature, History, Children’s Books & Illustrations, auction catalogue, London, 17 December 2009, lot 178). Its title refers to Arthur Lamb, the farmer who worked the Gedling land for many years before Jane Neave, and whose name probably adhered to the farm in local usage, regardless of the property’s official denotation as Church Farm or Phoenix Farm.

p. 335, ll. 9–12: Delete sentence ‘When one of the authors . . . Phoenix Farm.’

p. 336, second paragraph, entry for Robert Cary Gilson: An additional photograph of Robert Cary Gilson is reproduced in John Garth, ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and the Boy Who Didn’t Believe in Fairies’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010), p. 283.

pp. 336–7, entry for Robert Quilter Gilson: Gilson entered King Edward’s School in March 1906. Photographs of Robert Quilter Gilson are reproduced in John Garth, ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and the Boy Who Didn’t Believe in Fairies’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010), pp. 283, 286; John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War (2003); and The Tolkien Family Album, p. 41. Also see further, John Garth, ‘Gilson, Robert Quilter (1893–1916)’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006).

p. 336, l. 14 from bottom: For ‘the Gilson family home’ read ‘the Gilson family home, ‘Canterbury House’’.

p. 338, entry for Gnomish Grammar: A related fragment of manuscript by Tolkien, bearing a list of pronominal prefixes, was published as ‘Goldogrin Pronominal Prefixes’ within ‘Early Noldorin Fragments’ in Parma Eldalamberon 13 (2001), p. 97, ed. Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, Carl F. Hostetter, and Patrick Wynne.

pp. 339–40, entry for Gnomish Lexicon: See further, Carl F. Hostetter, ‘I·Lam na·Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of the Gnomish Tongue’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006) 291–2.

pp. 341–5, entry for Good and Evil: In ‘Peter Jackson, Evil, and the Temptations of Film at the Crack of Doom’, in Light beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work (2011), Russell W. Dalton explores two views of evil, Manichaeism and Boethianism, in relation to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and that work as interpreted in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations. See also Christopher Garbowski, ‘Evil’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).

p. 345, l. 9 from bottom: Add closing square bracket after ‘the Rings’.

p. 347, l. 11, entry for Eric Valentine Gordon (note on Ida Lilian Gordon): For ‘b. 1907’ read ‘1907–2002’.

p. 348, l. 3 from bottom: For ‘President of Magdalen College as well, and in 1933’ read ‘President of Magdalen College, giving up the Merton chair. In 1933 he became’.

p. 350, ll. 25–6: For ‘Fées’ read ‘fées’; for ‘wild-woodland’ read ‘wild-wood and’; for ‘too much the’ read ‘too much, the’.

p. 353, entry for The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel, first paragraph [REVISED]: Replace with: ‘Poem, first published in the Inter-University Magazine (University Catholic Societies’ Federation of Great Britain) for May 1927.’

p. 354, entry for Mary Elaine Griffiths, second paragraph: Griffiths herself suggested the revision of Clark Hall’s translation to Allen & Unwin, and that Tolkien should be its editor.

p. 354, entry for Jennie Grove: For ‘Grove, Jennie’ read ‘Grove, Mary Jane known as Jennie’. Tolkien’s portrait of Jennie Grove (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 24) is inscribed ‘M.J. Grove’. We should also add, to avoid confusion about her ancestry, that Jennie was born on 5 February 1864 in Kirkdale, West Derby, Liverpool, the only child of Frederick Grove, a clerk/bookkeeper, and Margaret Mounsey Richardson. One of Frederick’s sisters, Jane Grove, was the maternal grandmother of Edith Tolkien (née Bratt); thus Jennie and Edith were first cousins once removed. Jennie was a more distant cousin of Sir George Grove of the famous Grove Dictionary of Music. Priscilla Tolkien has told us that Jennie used to tell stories of how she could watch from her bed in Liverpool big ships sailing up the river Mersey. (Our sources: Priscilla Tolkien, personal correspondence; Rootsweb.)

pp. 355–8, entry for Henry Rider Haggard: See further, William H. Green, ‘King Thorin’s Mines: The Hobbit as Victorian Adventure Novel’, Extrapolation 42, no. 1 (2001).

pp. 360–1, entry for Robert Emlyn Havard: Comments about Havard by his eldest son, John, relative to the character ‘Dolbear’ in The Notion Club Papers, have been published in a blog post by Bruce Charlton, ‘How Similar Are Dolbear & “Humphrey” Havard?: John Havard’s Opinion’.

pp. 361–5, entry for Health: Among Tolkien’s ailments, we should have mentioned his bout with pneumonia in May–June 1923. It was a serious illness, during which he was visited by his maternal grandfather (John Suffield). Humphrey Carpenter (Biography, p. 106) quotes Tolkien’s recollection of his grandfather ‘looking at me and speaking to me in contempt – to the effect that I and my generation were degenerate weaklings. There was I gasping for breath,’ while the ninety-year-old Suffield left to journey by sea around the British Isles.

pp. 366–7, entry for Margaret Joy Hill: Joy Hill told Janet Watts of the Guardian newspaper (‘Bilbo Sings Again’, 19 September 1974) that she was ‘always frightened’ of Tolkien, ‘though by the end he was like an adopted grandfather. He was a kind man, but if something upset him, he would explode, and I would bear the brunt of the explosion.’ She would have liked to ask him questions about his books, but never had the opportunity, ‘so the things you were desperate to know, you never found out. But on the other hand you might be going for a walk, and you’d get a fantastic nonstop half-hour lecture on Frodo’s moral failure or the origins of a certain word.’

Joy Hill also wrote about her work with Tolkien as part of a birthday tribute to Tolkien by Bill Cater, ‘The Lord of the Legends’, in the Sunday Times (2 January 1972).

p. 382, add entry:

p. 383, entry for The Hoard: The earlier version, Iúmonna Gold Galdre Bewunden, published in The Gryphon, was reprinted also in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 241–3.

pp. 385–8, entry for The Hobbit: In his blog post‘The Hobbit: Some Thoughts on the 75th Anniversary’, David Harvey, writing as ‘The Countrey Justice’, reviews the history of the writing and publication of Tolkien’s book, based largely on and quoting extensively from John D. Rateliff’s History of The Hobbit. He concludes with Rateliff’s statement that ‘we may state with some confidence that the story was indeed begun in the summer of 1930 and completed in January 1933’, and adds: ‘This analysis is essentially confirmed by Scull and Hammond’, i.e. in the Companion and Guide.

If, by this, Harvey means that we present in our book the same evidence that Rateliff  does in his, then certainly that is so; but if by ‘confirmation’ he means that we agree with Rateliff’s conclusion and argue in its favour, then he has misread what we wrote. At the beginning of our Hobbit article, p. 385, we were careful to explain that

In The Art of The Hobbit (2011), where we had no space to review the body of evidence, we ventured that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit’s first words ‘around 1930’ – a safe guess if one must put it in a nutshell – but that ‘the evidence is too contradictory to give a precise date’ (p. 9). Also, we stated once again that the progress of the work could not ‘be traced with certainty’ (p. 10), and we allowed that although ‘it may have reached substantially its published form by the time Tolkien lent it to C.S. Lewis around the start of 1933, . . . it may be that its final chapters . . . were not composed until Allen & Unwin showed an interest in the work in 1936’ (p. 10). Such differing possibilities made it difficult to place the events of the history of The Hobbit within our Chronology, where its origin is described in three different places (1926, 1928, 1930) to cover all bases. On reviewing the Chronology and Reader’s Guide anew for this note, we see that we were more explicit than we intended in regard to the later workings of The Hobbit, leaning more towards the accounts given by Humphrey Carpenter and by Christopher Tolkien, in which Tolkien wrote the final chapters of his book only after he was asked to submit it for publication. That we did so (and of course, this can be only our interpretation) was because of the distinct and very remarkable change of tone in the final chapters, relative to those that had come earlier, and because of the physical evidence of a cessation of work we perceived in the manuscript of The Hobbit, which we examined closely several times at Marquette.

p. 385, ll. 6–7 from bottom, entry for The Hobbit: In regard to our statement ‘almost certainly, from the style of handwriting and references to The Lord of the Rings, written after that work (published 1954–5) had appeared’, this is how Tolkien's note struck the author of this essay. But it is also possible that the note was jotted during the composition of The Lord of the Rings, once Sauron had come to play an important role in that story. The handwriting of the note is similar to other, dated examples by Tolkien from the forties and fifties.

p. 390, ll. 12–14, entry for The Hobbit: In regard to the ‘very big gap’ in the writing of The Hobbit Tolkien claimed in his ‘Carnival of Books’ interview, Douglas A. Anderson has speculated that this point was reached in the winter of 1931–2 (assuming that Tolkien began to write the work in 1930), and that the course of the story was influenced by his receipt in May 1932 of an inscribed copy of R.W. Chambers’ Beowulf: An Introduction (second edition). ‘Tolkien’, Anderson presumes (probably correctly), ‘because of both personal and professional interest [in Beowulf], would have read the new edition of Chambers as soon as his regular duties allowed’; and in this he ‘seems to have found . . . the direction in which he would next take his children’s story’, the ‘Beorn episode . . . suffused with imagery inspired by critical thought on Beowulf’ (‘R.W. Chambers and The Hobbit’, Tolkien Studies 3 (2006), pp. 141–2).

p. 393, ll. 11–12 from bottom, entry for The Hobbit: ‘Stanley Unwin accepted The Hobbit for publication officially on 2 December 1936’: that is, he sent Tolkien a signed duplicate contract, the final step in the process of acceptance.

p. 394, second paragraph: On Tolkien’s illustrations for The Hobbit, see further, The Art of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (2011).

pp. 398–401, entry for The Hobbit, subsection ‘Criticism’: John D. Rateliff provides in his History of The Hobbit (2007) a transcription of Tolkien’s Hobbit manuscripts and typescripts, including later revisions, with copious notes on textual matters, extensive commentary, notes to the commentary, appended materials, and illustrations. Among numerous points, Rateliff contends that the origin of The Hobbit can be dated to 1930, that the work was complete when read by C.S. Lewis in January 1933, and that Tolkien ab initio intended the work to be part of the main line of his ‘Silmarillion’ mythology. Rateliff repeats his argument, more concisely, in ‘The Hobbit: A Turning Point’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014), and in his ‘Anchoring the Myth: The Impact of The Hobbit on Tolkien’s Legendarium’, in The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Mythology: Essays on Revisions and Influences, ed. Bradford Lee Eden (2014), he notes that his argument on dating is often repeated as ‘genericized “known facts”’, though it is ‘by no means universally’ accepted among Tolkien scholars.

Other essays in The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Mythology: Essays on Revisions and Influences are also worth noting. Marjorie Burns, in ‘Tracking the Elusive Hobbit (in Its Pre-Shire Den)’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), examines suggested parallels between The Hobbit and John Buchan’s novel Huntingtower.

p. 404, l. 16: For ‘a composer may use a segment’ read ‘a composer of music may use a quotation or theme’.

pp. 406–10, entry for The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son: Thomas Honegger, in ‘The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth: Philology and the Literary Muse’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), analyzes Tolkien’s use of ‘pride’ in Beorhtnoth through notes and drafts held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. His essay includes previously unpublished quotations from Tolkien’s manuscripts and refers to unpublished lecture notes.

p. 407, ll. 5–6 from bottom, entry for The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son: A manuscript of The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, once owned by E.V Gordon or his wife Ida, is dated ‘1920s’ in the catalogue of the University of Leeds library. This may be an assumption based on the decade in which Tolkien and E.V. Gordon were both on the faculty of the Leeds English School.

p. 410, add cross-reference: ‘Homes see Birmingham and environs; Leeds (Yorkshire); Oxford and environs; South Africa’.

pp. 410–15, entry for Hope and Despair: Further to this article, in ‘Virtue of Hope Illuminates “Lord of the Rings”’ (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 9 January 2002, quoted online) Katherine Kersten summarizes:

p. 415, ll. 4–6 from bottom, entry for The Horns of Ylmir: After ‘If the inscription is correct, Tolkien wrote it while visiting St Andrews, *Scotland, probably during the summer vacation but possibly at Easter.’ insert: ‘The date (1912) and the place of writing (St Andrews), however, are open to question, depending upon whether Tolkien visited St Andrews for a reason other than to see his *Aunt Jane Neave. If he did not, then he is not likely to have written The Grimness of the Sea in 1912, by which date his aunt no longer lived in St Andrews; and in that case, the poem may date instead to a visit in 1910 or 1911. Or it could be that the poem dates from 1912 but was not written in St Andrews.’

p. 416, ll. 24–5: For ‘lived with his *Aunt Jane Neave and her husband Edwin’ read ‘lived with Edwin Neave, the future husband of his Aunt Jane (*Jane Neave)’.

p. 416, l. 31: For ‘shows Jane and Edwin in bed’ read ‘shows Ronald and Edwin in bed’.

p. 416, ll. 33–4: The final sentence of his entry should end with ‘socks’, omitting the dash and ‘the forced result . . . to visit her sister’.

p. 422, ll. 3–16, entry for Illustration: On Cor Blok’s illustrations, see further, Cor Blok, ‘Pictures to Accompany a Great Story’, Lembas Extra (2007). One reason for Tolkien’s attraction to Blok’s pictures may be that the artist chose ‘to tell the story by means of standardized, simplified elements while focussing strictly on the essentials of the events to be depicted and the mood, or atmosphere, to be conveyed’ (Blok, p. 7).

p. 422, l. 16, entry for Illustration: Add at the end of the paragraph: ‘Most of Blok’s art for The Lord of the Rings was reproduced in A Tolkien Tapestry (2011), ed. Pieter Collier.’

p. 422, l. 28: For ‘by Pauline Baynes’ read ‘by Pauline Baynes, perhaps most notably her illustrations for *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962) and *Smith of Wootton Major (1967)’.

p. 422, entry for Illustration: Add following the second full paragraph:

p. 423, entry for Illustration: Add at end of final paragraph: ‘Here should also be mentioned one of the first important collections of Tolkien ‘fan’ art, A Middle-earth Album by Joan Wyatt (1979).’

pp. 423–4, entry for Imram: See also Marion Kippers, ‘Imram: Tolkien and Saint Brendan’, Lembas Extra 2009: Tolkien in Poetry and Song (2009).

p. 424, ll. 8–11, entry for Incledon family: For ‘(?1866–1936’ read ‘(1865–1936’. For ‘Walter Incledon (b. ?1850), a *Birmingham merchant’ read ‘Walter Bury Incledon (?1860–1950), a *Birmingham merchant, in 1890’. For ‘Marjorie’ read ‘Marjorie May’. In the 1891 Census, Walter Incledon’s occupation is given as ‘foreign manager, iron tube trade’.

pp. 425–31, entry for The Inklings: A significant mention of the Inklings by C.S. Lewis appears in his preface to *Essays Presented to Charles Williams (1947), p. v:

See also David Bratman, ‘The Inklings and Others: Tolkien and His Contemporaries’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014), particularly pp. 317–22.

p. 430, ll. 6–7, entry for The Inklings: Carpenter later wrote about this reconstruction: ‘It was fun to do, but I would not attempt it nowadays, because it seems to me that documentary truth is always stranger and more gripping than anything a biographer can invent, and to pollute it with the imagination is a pity’ (‘Lives Lived between the Lines’, Times Saturday Review, 27 February 1993, p. 15).

p. 431, third paragraph, entry for The Inklings: Diana Lynne Pavlac, now Diana Pavlac Glyer, has enlarged her study of the Inklings (very broadly considered) as The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (2007). Another work on the Inklings worth mentioning is The Inklings Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Lives, Thought and Writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and Their Friends by Colin Duriez and David Porter (2001), though its contents do not live up to the promise of its lengthy title. In regard to influence between C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, see Lewis’s letter to Francis Anderson, 23 September 1963, in the Lewis Collected Letters, vol. 3 (2006), pp. 1458–60: ‘I don’t think Tolkien influenced me, and I am certain I didn’t influence him. That is, didn’t influence what he wrote. My continual encouragement, carried to the point of nagging, influenced him v[ery] much to write at all with that gravity and at that length. In other words I acted as a midwife not as a father’ (p. 1458). The similarities between their writings, Lewis thought, were due to temperament and common sources.

p. 432, l. 3 from bottom, entry for The Istari: For ‘in 1954’ read ‘apparently in 1953 or 1954’. Although Christopher Tolkien dates this work to, ‘as it appears’, 1954, a more extensive span would seem to be called for, assuming that The Istari is indeed associated with the unfinished glossary-index to The Lord of the Rings as argued in the introduction to Unfinished Tales (pp. 12, 388). On this point, see also our Addenda and Corrigenda for the Chronology, p. 403, entry for ?August 1953–?first half of 1954.

p. 433, l. 17 from bottom: For ‘Curuno’ read ‘Curumo’.

p. 436, add entry:

p. 437, l. 22: For ‘New York’ read ‘New York, in 1966’.

p. 439, entry for Gwyn Jones: See further, Carl Phelpstead, Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), pp. 89–91, 151. The Welsh Review was published monthly between February and November 1939, when it was halted due to paper rationing; and quarterly from March 1944 to December 1948. Its ceased before Jones could publish, as he intended, Tolkien’s Sellic Spell. Phelpstead points out that although the Welsh Review whose stated interest was ‘Wales, its people, and their activities’, its editor was not averse to printing ‘work by writers who are not Welsh or part-Welsh by birth’ (p. 91). Tolkien’s friendship with Jones may have been the main reason for the inclusion of Aotrou and Itroun in the journal, but one may also argue that the poem was appropriate for the Welsh Review by virtue of a shared Celtic cultural tradition between Wales and Brittany.

pp. 440–6, entry for Kalevala: Tolkien’s Story of Kullervo and two versions of his essay on the Kalevala were published in Tolkien Studies 7 (2010), pp. 211–78, edited by Verlyn Flieger. Our own examination of these works in the Bodleian Library informed our essay in the Reader’s Guide. In regard to our dating of the revised typescript of the essay to ?1921–?1924 (Chronology, p. 115), which Flieger questions, we stand by our reasoning, which was as follows. A reference in the typescript essay (not in the manuscript) to the ‘late war’ takes it to after 1918, and one to the League of Nations moves it further to no earlier than 1920. (The League was created in the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed on 28 June 1919, but the Treaty did not go into effect until 10 January 1920, the first meeting of the League council was not until 16 January 1920, and the first General Assembly meeting did not occur until 15 November 1920.) The typescript (only) also refers to the recording of the Kalevala a century earlier, and Lönnrot began his work in the 1820s. ‘?1921–?1924’ seemed a reasonable period for this version of the talk, while Tolkien was at Leeds, lacking any evidence that he gave it again at Oxford – not that we have any documentation that he gave it at Leeds, but our Chronology entry is meant to date the typescript more so than a delivery of it.

See further, Anne C. Petty, ‘Identifying England’s Lönnrot’, Tolkien Studies 1 (2004).

p. 441, ll. 1–2, entry for Kalevala [REVISED]: For ‘which he delivered probably’ read ‘possibly for delivery’. There is as yet no evidence that the later version was delivered, but it was certainly tailored for delivery and seems to have been done so in the early nineteen-twenties (see above).

p. 441, l. 13: For ‘paper Tolkien that wrote’ read ‘paper that Tolkien wrote’.

pp. 447–51, entry for King Edward’s School, Birmingham: See further, Maggie Burns, ‘John Ronald’s Schooldays’, Mallorn 45 (Spring 2008). Burns notes, regarding Tolkien’s years on the School’s board of governors, that ‘signatures in the King Edward’s Governors’ records show that [Tolkien and Leonard Gamgee, Professor of Surgery at Birmingham University and son of the inventor of cotton-wool] were present at the same meetings’ (p. 30).

pp. 448–9, entry for King Edward’s School, Birmingham: As shown in Chronology, but which we neglected to mention in Reader’s Guide, the year at King Edward’s School was divided into three terms, called for convenience ‘autumn’, ‘spring’, and ‘summer’. These were roughly of three months each between September and July inclusive. The School published information booklets four times each year: a Blue Book in January and September, i.e. at the beginning of spring and autumn terms, and a class list in July and December immediately following summer and autumn terms. Transitions of pupils from one class to another, e.g. from Class VI to Class V, occurred only in autumn and spring.

p. 449, entry for King Edward’s School, Birmingham: W.H. Kirkby (l. 19), A.W. Adams (l. 20), R.H. Hume (l. 26), George Brewerton (l. 27), C.H. Heath (l. 29), and A.E. Measures (l. 33) all should have the title ‘Assistant Master’. Delete ‘probably’, l. 30. Lines 31–2, for ‘R.W. Reynolds in spring or summer term’ read ‘Assistant Master R.W. Reynolds in spring term’.

p. 449, ll. 1–2 from bottom, entry for King Edward’s School, Birmingham: A photograph of the Cadet Corps with Tolkien in the middle row, dated 4 April 1907, was reproduced in a blog post by John Garth.

p. 450, ll. 1–4, entry for King Edward’s School, Birmingham: A photograph of Tolkien costumed as Hermes for Speech Day on 26 July 1911 is reproduced in John Garth, Tolkien at Exeter College (2014), p. 6.

p. 451, add entry:

pp. 460–1, entry for Languages: According to Arne Zettersten, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Double Worlds and Creative Process: Language and Life (2011), p. 9, Tolkien was amused by ‘the fact that the Swedish language in a limited way can be called a tonal language, where different meanings of the same word may be due to tonal differences . . .’ but was ‘even more struck by the well-known fact that Norwegian has two national languages, one version based on Danish and spoken by the majority, and New Norwegian, which is more dialect-based. He was also ticked by my examples [expressed in conversation] of glottal stops in Danish and, above all, by the way the vocal chords begin to vibrate when the expiration increases.’

pp. 460–75, entry for Languages: See further, Arne Zettersten, ‘Discussing Language with J.R.R. Tolkien’, Lembas Extra (2007).

p. 462, entry for Languages, subsection ‘Old and Middle English’: Following the first paragraph on this page, add new paragraphs:

p. 463, entry for Languages, subsection ‘Finnish’: See further, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, ‘Finnish: The Land and Language of Heroes’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).

p. 464, l. 12 from bottom: For ‘an RAF cadet’ read ‘a Royal Air Force cadet’.

p. 464, l. 6 from bottom: For ‘1968’ read ‘1969’.

p. 465, entry for Languages, subsection ‘Gaelic (including Old Irish)’: Carl Phelpstead states in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), p. 27, that ‘the collection of Tolkien’s books in the English Faculty Library in Oxford certainly bears witness to the vigour and determination with which he attempted to learn Irish (and it must be recognised that he very possibly had a better command of the language than his modest comments to Rang and Mitchison suggest).’

pp. 468–9, entry for Languages, subsection ‘Old Icelandic (Old Norse)’: See further, Tom Birkett, ‘Old Norse’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).

pp. 472–3, entry for Languages, subsection ‘Welsh’: On Tolkien’s knowledge and use of Welsh, see further, Carl Phelpstead, Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011). Whereas we refer (p. 472) to Tolkien’s ‘substantial library of books on Welsh language and literature’, Phelpstead makes many references to individual titles and includes an appendix, ‘Tolkien’s Welsh Books’, pp. 117–19.

p. 473, l. 17: For ‘seem to have changed’ read ‘changed’.

p. 474, ll. 32–3: Delete the sentence ‘It seems . . . over the years’. This was already stated on p. 473.

pp. 475–82, entry for Languages, Invented: See further, Arden R. Smith, ‘Invented Languages and Writing Systems’, in A Companion to J.R.R Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).

pp. 475–82, entry for Languages, Invented: According to Richard Plotz, writing of his interview with Tolkien in Seventeen (January 1967), Tolkien said that he had ‘invented several languages when I was only about eight or nine, but I destroyed them. My mother disapproved. She thought of my languages as a useless frivolity taking up time that could be better spent in studying. It’s really too bad. The languages were rather crude attempts, but it would be interesting to see them’ (p. 118).

A history of the study of Tolkien’s invented languages is provided by Carl F. Hostetter, ‘Tolkienian Linguistics: The First Fifty Years’, in Tolkien Studies 4 (2007). See also Christopher Gilson, ‘Essence of Elvish: The Basic Vocabulary of Quenya’, Tolkien Studies 6 (2009).

Also see Carl F. Hostetter, ‘Elvish Compositions and Grammars’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), pp. 155–9, ‘an annotated chronological list of Tolkien’s chief writings in and concerning his invented languages that have been published to date’ (p. 155); and Hostetter’s invaluable ‘Languages Invented by Tolkien’, in the same volume. In the latter essay, Hostetter amplifies an important point he has made elsewhere (and we cite in different and abbreviated form in the Reader’s Guide), ‘that each of Tolkien’s languages has essentially two histories’: its external history, as part of Tolkien’s development of his invented languages over some six decades, and its internal history, within the fiction of Middle-earth. Therefore,

Also see Arden R. Smith, ‘Invented Languages and Writing Systems’, in A Companion to J.R.R Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).

p. 480, final paragraph: The chart declining the Quenya nouns cirya (‘ship’) and lasse (‘leaf’) received by Dick Plotz from Tolkien is often referred to as the ‘Plotz declension’. Parts were published in Tolkien Language Notes 2 (1974) and in Beyond Bree for March 1989, before the fuller appearance of the work in Vinyar Tengwar.

p. 481, l. 24: For ‘*Notes on Óre’ read ‘*‘Notes on Óre’’.

p. 481, second paragraph: Further ‘see also’ entries are included in the addenda and corrigenda, e.g. ‘The Entu, Ensi, Enta Declension’.

pp. 482–3, entry for The Last Ark: Ten successive early texts of the Qenya poem, and four contemporary English translations, are analyzed in ‘Oilima Markirya’, Parma Eldalamberon 16 (2006), pp. 53–87, ed. Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, and Carl F. Hostetter. The editors date this group of texts to 1931 or earlier, since Tolkien included one Qenya and one English version in A Secret Vice (?Autumn 1931). Two later texts are to be considered in a subsequent volume of Parma Eldalamberon.

p. 483, entry for The Last Ship: The earlier poem, Firiel, was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 261–6.

p. 484, l. 10: For ‘anl explanation’ read ‘an explanation’.

pp. 486–7, entry for The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun: See further, extensive comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), ch. 6. Aotrou and itroun are Breton words for ‘lord’ and ‘lady’.

p. 491, entry for Lay of Leithian, end of penultimate section: It is worth adding the comment by A.N. Wilson in his C.S. Lewis: A Biography (1990): ‘Though at times the verse [of the Lay of Leithian] is technically imperfect, it is full of passages of quite stunning beauty; and the overall conception must make it, though unfinished, one of the most remarkable poems written in the English in the twentieth century’ (p. 117).

p. 503, l. 6, entry for Leeds University Verse 1914–24: Add to the list of contributors ‘G.H. Cowling’. Douglas A. Anderson provides a brief description and biographical notes in ‘Leeds University Verse 1914–24’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006).

p. 505, ll. 8–9, entry for Clive Staples Lewis: Paul Johnson, who read history at Magdalen College from 1946, provides reminiscences of Lewis in an article, ‘When Dons Were Still Happy to Be Egregious’ (Spectator, 13 January 2010). Lewis had only one rival as a popular lecturer, the historian A.J.P. Taylor: Taylor spoke at 9.00 a.m. and attracted only men, while Lewis lectured at 10.00 a.m. and had a capacity audience of women, even from outside of the University proper. In that respect, Johnson recalls him looking ‘like a big, confident farmer watching his prize bull get to work, and I enjoyed our frequent rambles in the college deer park and around Addison’s Walk’.

p. 506, entry for Clive Staples Lewis [REVISED]: Add, after the second paragraph:

p. 506, penultimate paragraph, entry for Clive Staples Lewis: Related to our quotation of Tolkien’s letter to Dick Plotz, that his debt to C.S. Lewis ‘was not “influence” as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement’, Lewis himself wrote to Francis Anderson on 23 September 1963: ‘I don’t think Tolkien influenced me, and I am certain I didn’t influence him. That is, didn’t influence what he wrote. My continual encouragement, carried to the point of nagging, influenced him v[ery] much to write at all with that gravity and at that length’ (Collected Letters, vol. 3 (2006), p. 1458).

p. 506, entry for Clive Staples Lewis, penultimate paragraph: In August 1961, Lewis remarked to a correspondent that the enormous success of The Lord of the Rings was well deserved, though astonishing in that it had overcome widespread the anti-romanticism of the present day.

p. 508, l. 21, entry for Clive Staples Lewis: In regard to Tolkien’s ‘commentary’ on Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm, we should have pointed out that this is titled ‘The Ulsterior Motive’. Brief excerpts from this (now restricted) manuscript have been published in The Inklings, pp. 50, 51–2, 216, 232, and in A.N. Wilson, C.S. Lewis: A Biography (1990), pp. 135–6, 217.

p. 511, entry for Clive Staples Lewis: Add at end of the third full paragraph: ‘An expansive account of the efforts to bring C.S. Lewis to the Cambridge chair is Brian Barbour, ‘Lewis and Cambridge’, Modern Philology 96, no. 4 (May 1999); see especially pp. 459–65, in which Tolkien figures.’

Add to list of further reading: John Wain, ‘C.S. Lewis as a Teacher’, in Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers, ed. Joseph Epstein (1981).

p. 515, third paragraph, entry for Libraries and archives, subsection ‘Bodleian Library, Oxford’: The web address for Special Collections has changed, but the address given will redirect. Queries to the solicitors for the Tolkien Estate should now be directed to Maier Blackburn LLP, Prama House, 267 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7HT U.K.

pp. 515–17, entry for Libraries and archives, subsection ‘Other Libraries and Archives’: The library of the University of Leeds contains a small collection of Tolkien letters and other manuscripts sent to E.V. and Ida Gordon and their eldest daughter. An inventory is available online. This includes a manuscript (portion?) of The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son; translations into (or original poetry in) Old English; a satirical poem, Bummsdrápa, referring to the Kolbítar (*Societies and clubs); a manuscript of The Root of the Boot (*The Stone Troll) and other poems published in *Songs for the Philologists; All Hail! a song referring to the Last Judgement, sung to the tune of ‘Oh Dear What Can the Matter Be?’; a poem entitled The Lion Is Loud and Proud; another poem, Bleak Heave the Billows, about a lonely beach and ship’s masts seen through mist; a poem, Brýdleop, written as a song for the wedding of E.V. Gordon and Ida Pickles in 1930; and an untitled epistolary poem, written by Tolkien to thank the Gordons for their hospitality.

p. 545, ll. 12–16 from bottom, entry for The Lord of the Rings: Further in regard to the unfinished index, Christopher Tolkien notes in his introduction to Unfinished Tales that from this ‘I derived the plan of my index to The Silmarillion, with translation of names and brief explanatory statements, and also, both there and in the index to [Unfinished Tales], some of the translations and the wording of some of the “definitions”. From it comes also the “essay on the Istari” [*The Istari] . . .’ (p. 12). Portions of the glossary-index were published here and there in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion by Hammond and Scull.

p. 550, ll. 6–16, entry for The Lord of the Rings: In the online thread ‘Not Everybody Loves Tolkien’, on the Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza forum, ‘geordie’ makes the remarkable observation that in 1956 Edmund Wilson collaborated with Louise Bogan to compose a poem of tribute to W.H. Auden, in which Wilson and Bogan wrote alternate lines. One of Wilson’s lines reads: ‘The orc Tolkien usurps Aladdin’s tower’, among things that ‘have gone to pot’. More remarkable still is that the poem was included, as ‘To Wystan Auden on His Birthday’, on p. 43 of the special number of Shenandoah (Winter 1967) which also contained Tolkien’s For W.H.A.

pp. 551–4, entry for The Lord of the Rings, subsection ‘Popularity’: According to Daphne Castell in ‘The Realms of Tolkien’ (New Worlds, November 1966), based on an interview, Tolkien found the success of The Lord of the Rings to be ‘surprising and pleasing’:

Several articles in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006) are concerned with the reception of Tolkien’s works (largely though not exclusively The Lord of the Rings) in various countries, e.g. ‘America in the 1960s: Reception of Tolkien’ and ‘Denmark: Reception of Tolkien’, to name only the first two in sequence. Claire Buck, in ‘Literary Context, Twentieth Century’, usefully explores reasons why The Lord of the Rings was dismissed by modernist critics, and through a profusion of similarities attempts to place the work in the context of contemporary writings – on which point Shippey’s more succinct argument in J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century is to be preferred. Shippey himself contributes to the Encyclopedia a helpful overview of fantasy writings by other authors following the publication of The Lord of the Rings (‘Literature, Twentieth Century: Influence of Tolkien’), noting both imitation of Tolkien, such as The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, and works such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy which are non-Tolkienian but owe their publication at least in part to public interest in fantasy fiction, and to the genre itself, which Tolkien helped to create. Shippey comments that

In her entry for Tolkien in The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture (2009), Janet Montefiore cites four reasons why The Lord of the Rings became so widely popular (her supplement to the third, ‘This world also . . .’, is particularly debatable).

On the popularity of The Lord of the Rings in non-English-speaking countries, see (inter alia) Maria Kamenkovich, ‘The Secret War and the End of the First Age: Tolkien in the (Former) U.S.S.R.’, Mallorn 29 (1992); René van Rossenberg, ed., Hobbits in Holland: Leven en Werk van J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) (1992); Johan Vanhecke, ‘Tolkien in Dutch: A Study of the Reception of Tolkien’s Work in Belgium and the Netherlands’, Mythlore 18, no. 4, whole no. 70 (Autumn 1992).

p. 552, l. 16 from bottom: The words ‘fairy-story’ should be within double quotation marks.

p. 553, l. 8 from bottom: For ‘other what’ read ‘other than what’.

p. 571, l. 4: For ‘Tolkien and the Silmarillion’ read ‘Tolkien & the Silmarillion’. The ampersand is used within the book and on its covers

p. 571, l. 9, entry for George MacDonald: Also see further: Jason Fisher, ‘Reluctantly Inspired: George MacDonald and J.R.R. Tolkien’, North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies 25 (2006) [PDF], in the journal’s online digital archive.

p. 571, add entry:

pp. 571–2, entry for Josef Madlener: Another picture postcard by Madlener has come to light, reproducing the painting Heilige Familie (‘Holy Family’, i.e. Mary and the baby Jesus on a donkey, led by Joseph through a German wood).  Tolkien used it to write to K.M. Kilbride on 24 December 1938. An auction listing by Bonhams, London, 12 June 2012, states that the card was in a series of six published by F.A. Ackermann.

pp. 579–80, entry for The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon: The earlier version, Why the Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon, was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp.180–4.

p. 581, entry for The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late: Line 3, for ‘with the stated title’ read ‘with the stated title and two minor revisions’. The earlier version, The Cat and the Fiddle, was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 173–6.

pp. 585–6, entry for The Mewlips: The precursor to this poem, Knocking at the Door, has been reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 210–12.

p. 589, third paragraph from bottom, entry for A Middle English Vocabulary: Following on Shippey’s concise ‘Tolkien’s Academic Reputation Now’, a lengthy, more recent, but more opinionated appraisal of A Middle English Vocabulary and other works is provided in ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Medieval Scholarship and Its Significance’ by Michael D.C. Drout, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007).

p. 590, entry for Stella Marie Mills: Replace with:

p. 591, penultimate paragraph, final sentence, entry for Mr. Bliss: This would better read:

p. 591, final paragraph, entry for Mr. Bliss: ‘By late 1964 the manuscript of Mr. Bliss came to the attention of Clyde S. Kilby of Wheaton, College, Wheaton, Illinois, who proposed that it be published. Tolkien by this time had come to dislike Mr. Bliss except as a private joke. . . .’ This would be better, and more fully, put as follows:

p. 592, following ‘each facing page’ (l. 2), entry for Mr. Bliss: A further paragraph might be included here:

p. 594, l. 1: For ‘1867’ read ‘1857’.

pp. 594–5, entry for Francis Xavier Morgan: See further, online articles by José Manuel Ferrández.

pp. 599–600, entry for William Morris: Tolkien also owned Morris’s lecture Some Hints on Pattern Designing (1899); his copy was sold at auction in 2013 to Exeter College, Oxford. Speculation that Tolkien used part of his money from the Skeat Prize to purchase this book seems less likely than that it was an Exeter College prize itself, as it bears the Exeter coat of arms on its upper binding. It is also possible that Tolkien acquired it after his years at Exeter, as his signature inside it is in a different calligraphic form than he used while an undergraduate.

pp. 604–14, entry for Mortality and Immortality: See further, an important collection of essays on this subject, The Broken Scythe: Death and Immortality in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Roberto Arduini and Claudio A. Testi (2012).

p. 606, l. 6: For ‘all there sorrows’ read ‘all their sorrows’.

p. 616, l. 12 from bottom, entry for Music: For ‘Piave’ read ‘[librettist Francesco Maria] Piave’.

pp. 618–20, entry for Music, sub-section ‘Music in Tolkien’s Writings’: See further, Julian Tim Morton Eilmann, ‘I Am the Song: Music, Poetry, and the Transcendent in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth’, in the collection Light beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work (2011); and Heidi Steimel, ‘“Bring Out the Instruments!”: Instrumental Music in Middle-earth’, in Music in Middle-earth (2010), which looks ‘at the kinds of instruments that appear in Tolkien’s works, at those who construct and play them, at the effect they have, and at their significance within the narrative’ (p. 91).

p. 620, entry for Music, sub-section ‘Music Inspired by Tolkien’: See further, the collection Music in Middle-earth, ed. Heidi Steimel and Friedhelm Schneidewind (2010), part D, ‘Interpretations of Tolkien’s Music in Our World’; and Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien, ed. Bradford Lee Eden (2010), especially the final three essays. One of the latter, David Bratman, ‘Liquid Tolkien: Music, Tolkien, Middle-earth, and More Music’, deals both with music in Tolkien’s life and with music inspired by Tolkien.

pp. 620–2, entry for Mythopoeia: See further, Carl Phelpstead, ‘Myth-making and Sub-creation’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014).

pp. 622–3, entry for The Name ‘Nodens’: Tolkien’s note has been reprinted in Tolkien Studies 4 (2007), pp. 177–83.

See further, comments by Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011), ch. 4. A prefatory note in the Report lists those who did the actual work of the excavation, and mentions others who visited the site and helped to identify the finds. Among the latter is R.G. Collingwood who, like Tolkien, was a Fellow of Pembroke College, and was almost certainly responsible for Tolkien being asked to help with the mythological-philological problem of Nodens. (Collingwood’s role in bringing Tolkien to the Lydney Park project occurred independently to Douglas A. Anderson, who mentioned his thought on the matter to us in 2001, and to Carl Phelpstead in Tolkien and Wales.)

pp. 623–4, entry for The Nameless Land: See further, Stefan Ekman, ‘Echoes of Pearl in Arda’s Landscape’, Tolkien Studies 6 (2009).

p. 624, following the block quotation, entry for Names: At his confirmation in 1903 Tolkien took the additional name ‘Philip’, but used it only rarely.

p. 625, l. 14, entry for Names: The phonetic rendering of Tolkien’s surname should be understood to place the stress on the first syllable. The same pronunciation is described by Clyde S. Kilby in ‘Many Meetings with Tolkien’ (an edited transcript of remarks at the December 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America), published in Niekas 19 (c. 1968). Henry S. Resnik, however, in remarks at a July 1966 meeting of the Tolkien Society of America, said (on the basis of a half-hour telephone interview) that Tolkien ‘pronounces his name tul-KEEN. . . . His American publisher pronounces it TUL-kin, and I took him as the leading authority, but apparently Tolkien knows’ (‘An Interview with Tolkien’, p. 43).

pp. 631–7, entry for Nature: In ‘Water, Ecology, and Spirituality in Tolkien’s Middle-earth’, in the collection Light beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work (2011), Matthew Dickerson points out that not much has been written about the part water plays in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien does not take it for granted. Water in the shape of rivers, waterfalls, lakes, marshes, and so forth provides important plot elements, often involving difficulty or danger. Both Frodo and Sam suffer from its lack in Mordor, and into Sam’s thoughts ‘there came the memory of water; and every brook or stream or fount that he had ever seen, under green willow-shades or twinkling in the sun, danced and rippled for his torment’ (quoted p. 20). Tolkien also shows the ecological importance of water by providing vivid illustrations of what happens when it is polluted by industry, as by Saruman’s pits and forges in Isengard, and by Ted Sandyman’s new mill which befouls the Water in Hobbiton. In Ainulindalë, Eru describes to Ulmo the beauties of water that even Melkor has not been able to destroy, ‘and it is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth’ (Silmarillion, p. 19).

See also Gerard Hynes, ‘“The Cedar Is Fallen”: Empire, Deforestation and the Fall of Númenor’, Tolkien: The Forest and the City, ed. Helen Conrad-O’Briain and Gerard Hynes (2013).

pp. 637–8, entry for Emily Jane Neave: In *Finn and Hengest Tolkien speculates (p. 52) that the surname Neave ‘probably’ is related to the name Hnæf via Middle English neve (‘nephew’) and modern dialectal neve, neive.

p. 637, ll. 21–3, entry for Emily Jane Neave [REVISED]: For ‘In 1892 Jane . . . 1901 Census).’ read:

p. 637, l. 29: For ‘now or later a clerk for Guardian Fire Insurance’ read ‘the son of a Salford pawnbroker, now or later an inspector for the Guardian Fire Insurance Company (later the Guardian Assurance Company)’.

p. 637, l. 12 from bottom–p. 638, l. 5, entry for Emily Jane Neave [REVISED]: For ‘After 1901 . . . life in agriculture.’ read:

p. 638, ll. 5–12, entry for Emily Jane Neave: For ‘By 1923 . . . Frank Suffield’ read:

p. 638, entry for Emily Jane Neave: Add final paragraph:

pp. 638–40, entry for Edith Nesbit: Another work by E. Nesbit possibly worth mentioning in connection with Tolkien is The Enchanted Castle, first published in 1907. Among the treasures of an estate (the ‘castle’ of the title) in England’s West Country is a magic ring which does whatever its possessor declares – sometimes unwittingly, and as always in a Nesbit story, with unfortunate consequences. Most notably, the ring can convey invisibility, but has no effect on the wearer’s shadow (‘In the blazing sunlight that flooded the High Street four shadows to three children seemed dangerously noticeable. A butcher’s boy looked far too earnestly at the extra shadow, and his big liver-coloured lureher snuffed at the legs of that shadow’s mistress and whined uncomfortably’ (ch. 3).) The presence of a shadow cast by an otherwise invisible person recalls the scene in The Hobbit, Chapter 5, in which the goblins see the invisible Bilbo’s shadow as he escapes through the back-gate; while the ability of a dog to detect someone who cannot be seen brings to mind early texts of The Lord of the Rings in which Bingo has put on the Ring at Farmer Maggot’s house, but the latter’s dog ‘remained behind jumping and frisking round Bingo to his annoyance’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 94) or had ‘halted near Bingo sniffing and growling with the hair rising on its neck, and a puzzled look in its eyes’ (The Return of the Shadow, p. 290).

In another scene, when the invisible Mabel is having tea, ‘it was rather horrid to see the bread and butter waving about in the air, and bite after bite disappearing from it apparently by no human agency; and the spoon rising with apple in it and returning to the plate empty’, or ‘a mug of milk was suspended in the air without visible means of support’ (ch. 3). Compare again, perhaps, invisible Bingo’s (later Frodo’s) visit to Farmer Maggot during which a ‘mug left the table, rose, tilted in the air, and then returned empty to its place’ (The Return of the Shadow, pp. 96, 292).

Christina had read The Enchanted Castle as a child, but remembered it only for its Ugly-Wuglies, creatures made by the children of the novel from found objects and paper masks which are animated by means of the ring. She was reminded of the book’s ring only in February 2008 while reading Worlds Within: Children’s Fantasy from the Middle Ages to Today by Sheila A. Egoff (1988). Since then, we have asked Christopher and Priscilla Tolkien if they had The Enchanted Castle when they were children. Neither recalls having it, though other books by Nesbit were on their shelves.

Among Nesbit’s likely lovers, certainly a close admirer, was R.W. Reynolds, important in our context as one of Tolkien’s masters at King Edward’s School, Birmingham. Nesbit dedicated her adult novel The Incomplete Amorist (1906) partly to Reynolds, and used his Christian name for one of the Bastables.

p. 638, l. 7 from bottom: For ‘Would-be-Goods’ read ‘Wouldbegoods’.

p. 639, l. 21: For ‘1939’ read ‘1938’.

p. 640, entry for Edith Nesbit: To the ‘see also’ reference on this page, which as a matter of consistent style should read ‘see further’, add: Noel Streatfeild, Magic and the Magician: E. Nesbit and Her Children’s Books (London: Ernest Benn, 1958).

pp. 640–1, entry for A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District: See also ‘Walter E. Haigh, Author of A New Glossary of the Huddersfield District’ by Janet Brennan Croft, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007). Croft suggests that ‘Tolkien most likely met Haigh [1856–1931] through the Yorkshire Dialect Society’ (p. 185).

p. 642, entry for Newby, Percy Howard: A website devoted to P.H. Newby includes photographs, links to articles, and other useful features.

p. 643, entry for Nieninque: We should clarify that nieninqe is Qenya (from the Qenyaqetsa lexicon) for ‘snowdrop’, literally ‘white tear’. Nieninque is a later form of the word, in Quenya. A discussion of five texts of the poem was published as ‘Nieninqe’ in Parma Eldalamberon 16 (2006), pp. 88–97, ed. Christopher Gilson, Bill Welden, and Carl F. Hostetter. This includes transcriptions of the first, second, and fifth versions, with Tolkien’s English translations of the first and second; a note on the language of the second version, appended to the poem; variant readings of the third version; and a fifth version, with Tolkien’s glossarial comments. The fourth text in this sequence, following on the sequence of the earlier three versions, is the one incorporated by Tolkien in A Secret Vice. The first text was written in ?1921, the fourth in ?1931, and the fifth on a page from a desk calendar for 26 June–2 July 1955.

p. 643, add entry [REVISED]:

p. 644, l. 1: For ‘*Quenta Silmarillion’ read ‘*‘Quenta Silmarillion’ ’.

p. 645, l. 18: For ‘Curifin’ read ‘Curufin’.

p. 649, l. 1: For ‘north-eastern’ read ‘north-western’.

pp. 653–4, entry for Northernness: In regard to The Wanderer, see Stuart D. Lee, ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and The Wanderer: From Edition to Application’, Tolkien Studies 6 (2009), pp. 189–211. Lee catalogues and discusses Tolkien’s views on the poem as contained in lecture notes preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. ‘Considered together these manuscripts and typescripts provide us with transcriptions, translations, glossaries, and analyses all related to The Wanderer ranging from the 1920s through to the 1960s with six main peaks of concerted effort (1927, 1938, 1942, 1948, 1959, and 1964–65) plus a possible “missing” period related to [Tolkien’s] work for Methuen with [E.V.] Gordon in the 1930s [i.e. on prospective editions of The Wanderer and The Seafarer]’ (p. 195).

p. 655, final paragraph, entry for Northernness: Add to citations: Mary R. Bowman, ‘Refining the Gold: Tolkien, The Battle of Maldon, and the Northern Theory of Courage’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010), pp. 91–115; and J.S. Ryan, ‘Trolls and Other Themes: William Craigie’s Significant Folkloric Influence on the Style of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit’ in his Tolkien’s View: Windows into his World (2009).

p. 657, l. 7: For ‘Notes on Óre’ read ‘‘Notes on Óre’’.

p. 664, first paragraph, entry for The Notion Club Papers: The cited criticism by Verlyn Flieger is supplemented by Flieger, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dream at the Barrow: Memory and Reincarnation in Middle-earth’, Tolkien Studies 4 (2007).

p. 682, entry for Oliphaunt: The precursor to this poem, Iumbo, was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 216–20. Lines 9–11 from bottom, for ‘bestiary, in particular the Physiologus (‘Naturalist’) poems in the Exeter Book, which describe the characteristics of animals and draw from them Christian morals’ read ‘bestiary, which describes the characteristics of animals and draws from them Christian morals. This, in turn, was based on earlier sources, including the ?second-century compilation entitled Physiologus (‘Naturalist’)’.

pp. 683–9, entry for On Fairy-Stories: In 2008 On Fairy-Stories was published by HarperCollins in an ‘expanded edition’, as Tolkien on Fairy-Stories, with commentary and notes by editors Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson. The essay was reprinted ‘in its final form as edited by Christopher Tolkien and published in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays’ (p. 27). With this are partial transcriptions, edited to form ‘a readable text’, of the two manuscript versions we refer to in Reader’s Guide, p. 687 (numerous extracts also appear in the Reader’s Guide and in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion); editors’ introductions and annotations; and a comparison of the essay as published in Essays Presented to Charles Williams with that published in Tree and Leaf (similar to the analysis in Descriptive Bibliography, pp. 184, 186–9).

Flieger and Anderson add to the history of On Fairy-Stories, using information provided by Rachel Hart of the University of St Andrews (cf. addendum below for Reader’s Guide pp. 686–7). On 29 June 1938, the Faculty of Arts of St Andrews recommended that Gilbert Murray, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, be invited to deliver the Andrew Lang Lecture in 1939, and that Tolkien be invited to do so in 1941. Flieger and Anderson suggest that Tolkien was nominated by T.M. Knox (see Chronology, p. 226), who had ties to Oxford. Murray, however, was not able to accept the invitation for 1939, nor was the man originally suggested for 1940, the Right Honourable Lord Hugh Macmillan. On 8 October 1938 the Secretary to the University, Andrew Bennett, wrote to Tolkien, inviting him to deliver the next lecture in the series: ‘The amount of the stipend is small, being only £30. The Lecturer is supposed to deliver at least one Lecture during his tenure of office, the subject to be “Andrew Lang and his Work” or one or other of the many subjects on which he wrote’ (quoted in On Fairy-Stories (2008), p. 124). Tolkien quickly sent a reply (his letter apparently does not survive), which Bennett acknowledged on 14 October. Having heard nothing further, Bennett wrote to Tolkien again on 18 January 1939. Tolkien replied on 1 February (deduced from another letter from Bennett, on 3 February), suggesting 8 March as the date for his lecture and giving its topic as ‘fairy-stories’. These were approved.

That Tolkien revised On Fairy-Stories in 1943, a conclusion reached both by Flieger and Anderson and ourselves, is almost certain from internal and external evidence. To this we might add the following, more circumstantial point, which we deleted from the Reader’s Guide for the sake of space:

On p. 688 of the Reader’s Guide, ll. 13–16, we state: ‘Tolkien felt that the ideas he developed in On Fairy-Stories had influenced the writing of *The Lord of the Rings, and said so in letters at least as early to correspondents including Peter Hastings (September 1954) and Dora Marshall (3 March 1955).’ Apart from an omission – we probably meant to say ‘as early as its first publication’ – the letters cited give poor support to the assertion. The letter to Peter Hastings simply refers to ‘the Essay’ (Letters, p. 188) without particular connection to The Lord of the Rings; and while Tolkien comments in his letter to Dora Marshall that On Fairy-Stories raised the issue of ‘fairy-story’ being ‘really an adult genre . . . a mere proposition – which awaited proof’ (Letters, p. 209), it too is a more tenuous reference than called for. Far better are those cited by Flieger and Anderson: Tolkien’s letter to W.H. Auden of 7 June 1955, in which he wrote:

A useful overview of the development of On Fairy-Stories is given by Colin Manlove in his review of the ‘expanded edition’ of On Fairy-Stories, ed. Flieger and Anderson, in Tolkien Studies 6 (2009).

pp. 686–7, entry for On Fairy-Stories: We wrote, in regard to On Fairy-Stories as presented at the University of St Andrews: ‘There seems to be no record of when the invitation to lecture was sent to Tolkien’. So we were informed by the Archivist at St Andrews when we corresponded with him at some length in 2000. The current Archivist, Rachel Hart, however, has had more success in locating pertinent files. She writes in ‘Tolkien, St. Andrews, and Dragons’, in Tree of Tales: Tolkien, Literature, and Theology (2007):

pp. 687–8, entry for On Fairy-Stories: In regard to the publication history of On Fairy-Stories, Rachel Hart notes that the University of St Andrews reached an agreement with Oxford University Press to publish the first ten Andrew Lang Lectures. Tolkien’s lecture, however, was the eleventh in the series, and in the event, appeared in Essays Presented to Charles Williams two years before the OUP volume, which had been delayed by the war.

p. 689, entry for Once upon a Time: The poem was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 280–2. In an unpublished lecture, Rhona Beare suggests that the ‘lintips’ are a development from the tiny spirits depicted by Tolkien in *An Evening in Tavrobel; both we and Christopher Tolkien think this a strong possibility. See further, Douglas A. Anderson, ‘The Mystery of Lintips’, blog post for 22 July 2013, and Kris Swank, ‘Tom Bombadil’s Last Song: Tolkien’s “Once upon a Time”’, Tolkien Studies 10 (2013).

pp. 689–90, entry for Charles Talbut Onions’: According to Tom Shippey, C.T. Onions pronounced his surname not like the vegetable but ‘On-aye-ons’, and ‘unlike Tolkien he retained a Birmingham accent through his life’ (‘History in Words: Tolkien’s Ruling Passion’, in The Lord of the Rings, 1954–2004: Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Blackwelder (2006), p. 26; reprinted in Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (2007)).

p. 693, entry for Over Old Hills and Far Away, ll. 11–12: Our note that Over Old Hills and Far Away was rewritten in Oxford in 1927 came from Christopher Tolkien’s statement in The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 108. On looking again at our notes made when viewing the typescript of the poem, however, they record that its (later) added inscription by Tolkien referring to Oxford, 1927 was struck through – though when, and for what reason, we couldn’t say.

pp. 693–713, entry for Oxford and environs: Useful sources for this entry include Philip Atkins and Michael Johnson, A New Guidebook to the Heart of Oxford (1999); Christopher Hibbert, ed., The Encyclopædia of Oxford (1988); Derek S. Honey, An Encyclopaedia of Oxford Pubs, Inns and Taverns (1998); and Geoffrey Tyack, Oxford and Cambridge (the Blue Guide to this region, 5th edn., 1999). A new book, Oxford Then & Now: From the Henry Taunt Collection by Malcolm Graham and Laurence Waters (Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2006), includes photographs of Oxford as it was when Tolkien was an undergraduate at Exeter College, juxtaposed with photos of more or less the same view as it is today.

p. 694, second paragraph, entry for Oxford and environs: ‘Swiss Cottage’, at the Broad Street end of Turl Street (‘the Turl’), seems to have been so named because it had a gable and exposed timber frame reminiscent of Swiss architecture. Its construction reused elements of the Prideaux Buildings, built in 1620 and demolished in 1856. A photograph of the Prideaux Buildings was reproduced on p. 38, and one of the ‘Swiss Cottage’ on p. 40, in Frances Cairncross, ed., Exeter College: The First 700 Years (2013); the latter was also reproduced in John Garth, Tolkien at Exeter College (2014), p. 20.

p. 699, final line: The Bodleian shop moved in 2007 to the Old Schools Quadrangle. The Divinity School is still open to visitors.

pp. 702–3, entry for Oxford and environs, subsection ‘Exeter College’: In his text for the booklet Exeter College, Oxford (published by the college c. 1990), J.R.L. Maddicott comments that Tolkien has eclipsed the Exeter authors that had gone before, even William Morris. ‘It is safe to say that his later books have been more widely read than those of all the Exeter men since the fourteenth century and that he has almost certainly given more pleasure to more people than any other single member of the College’ (p. 22). Not all of the biographical details given for Tolkien in the booklet are correct, however, and later investigation refuted the attribution to Tolkien of a suggestion left in the Junior Common Room that ‘a good English dictionary’ be purchased for that space.

On Exeter College, Oxford, see also John Garth, ‘Tolkien, Exeter College and the Great War’, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration (2008); Frances Cairncross, ed., Exeter College: The First 700 Years (2013); and John Garth, Tolkien and Exeter College (2014). The latter reproduces a previously unpublished sketch by Tolkien of Exeter College Hall, as well as one of Broad Street in Oxford.

p. 707, entry for Oxford and environs (‘Old Ashmolean’): A photograph of the interior of the Old Ashmolean, showing the Dictionary Room where Tolkien worked and some of its staff (including Henry Bradley, William Craigie, and Charles Onions), is reproduced in Gilliver, Marshall, and Weiner, The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary (2006), p. 5.

p. 714, third paragraph, entry for University of Oxford: Here we note the first of the Oxford colleges for women, Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville. We should have mentioned as well the later establishment of other Oxford women’s colleges, or of places of residence for Oxford women students, which are mentioned in the Reader’s Guide in relation to Tolkien’s students and colleagues.

When Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall opened in 1879, twenty-five women students chose not to attach themselves to either institution, and instead were taken in hand by the Association for Promoting the Education of Women at Oxford (AEW). This group was given the name Oxford Home-Students in 1891, changed to the Society of Oxford Home-Students in 1898. Judy G. Batson writes in Her Oxford (2008) – an invaluable source of information on Oxford women – ‘the Home-Students consisted of a much more diverse population than did the two halls [Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville]. Some of the students were from illustrious academic Oxford families and lived in their own homes; others lodged with relatives, friends, or ladies’ whom the principal ‘carefully handpicked. Older women interested in the new opportunities for higher education but uninterested in hall life found the Society ideally suited to their needs, as did women not wishing to pursue a full course of study but wanting to briefly sample some of what the AEW offered’ (p. 28). Susan Dagnall and Elaine Griffiths, for example, were Home-Students, and as Roman Catholics, lived in the hostel founded especially for Catholics in 1908 (a hostel for Anglican Home-Students was not created until twenty years later). The Society of Oxford Home-Students was later renamed St Anne’s Society, and in 1952 was incorporated as St Anne’s College.

In 1886, St Hugh’s was established in Oxford as a residential hall for women students who found the costs of residence at Oxford or Cambridge too extravagant. Another hall, St Hilda’s, opened at Oxford in 1893. Both grew in size and prestige, and like Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville Hall, long had little direct affiliation with the other colleges at Oxford. Once women were granted full university membership in 1920, the four colleges (the Home-Students were in a different category) were forced to incorporate by royal charter or act of Parliament and to change certain elements of governance. Of the four, only Lady Margaret Hall chose to retain its original name, including ‘hall’ rather than ‘college’.

p. 723, entry for University of Oxford: In the Companion and Guide, particularly in the Chronology, we refer to lectures and classes taught at Oxford, and it has come to our attention that there is some confusion about these terms. In practice, of course, both refer to forms of teaching, and in each an instructor may lecture in a broad sense of the term. But a distinction needs to be made between the two words according to the Oxford system, as we have done in the Companion and Guide, reflecting the literature of the subject. Lecture refers to a presentation to a potentially large audience, almost always open to all members of the University without condition or charge, at which attendance is not required and the speaker does not pause to discuss his or her subject or to take questions (cf. the description we quote on p. 723 from L.A. Crosby). Class, in contrast, refers to instruction with a more limited number of specially enrolled students, which may make use of written materials as well as discussion. Classes are sometimes referred to as group conferences or seminars.

p. 725, second paragraph, entry for University of Oxford: Add to list of further reading: Judy G. Batson, Her Oxford (2008), an invaluable resource not only on women at Oxford, but on Oxford in general, notably on the university during the periods of the two world wars.

p. 725, ll. 25–30: For ‘began in 1860’ read ‘began in 1858’. For ‘succeeded Furnivall in 1873’ read ‘succeeded Furnivall in 1879’. For ‘published at last in 1879’ read ‘published at last in 1884’.

p. 736, l. 15 from bottom: For ‘Naval and RAF cadets’ read ‘Navy and Air Force cadets’. It was national policy in Britain that soldiers, sailors, and airmen were better for having experienced, even for a brief time, the enlargement of mental horizons provided by a university education (alongside more specific military training). Oxford offered short courses of six months’ duration to service probationers from 1941, beginning with Army signallers and Royal Air Force cadets; Navy cadets joined the programme at Oxford in 1943. Although Army cadets were restricted to the science and technical curriculums, the Navy and Air Force not only permitted but encouraged their cadets to read in other subject. See further, our blog post of 27 December 2011, ‘Oxford Cadets’.

pp. 738–44, entry for Oxford English School, subsection ‘Tolkien and the Oxford English School’: Another recollection of Tolkien as a lecturer is the following by Mrs Helen Tyrrell Wheeler, who read English at Oxford during the war years. Tolkien’s lectures,

In an article by Penny Radford shortly after Tolkien’s death, his colleague Nevill Coghill remembered him as ‘always the most accessible of men’ who ‘gave unstinted help to all who asked for it. I have known him plan a set of lectures for another don who was a beginner’ (‘Professor Tolkien Leaves an Unpublished Book’, Times (London), 3 September 1973, p. 1).

Harry Blamires, who read English at University College, Oxford in the mid-1930s, told his granddaughter that Tolkien’s lectures were considered so boring that few students attended. Blamires himself attended only Tolkien’s lectures on ‘Finn and Hengest’ twice weekly, which he said he forced himself to do partly out of pity, but also out of curiosity, to have ‘something to talk about at sherry parties’. Later to become an authority on James Joyce, he felt that ‘the [compulsory] study of Old English was a regrettable necessity’, and therefore Tolkien ‘remained a somewhat remote figure’. Blamires ‘was a member of a small tutorial group whom [Tolkien] took for a term through some Old English poems’, but never got to know Tolkien well. ‘Yet he was plainly a likeable man, free of pretentiousness, and conveying a vague impression of scholarly unworldliness’ (quoted in Diana Blamires, ‘The Bore of the Rings’, Times2 (London), 11 December 2003).

Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, who became an important novelist and poet respectively, went up to St John’s College, Oxford to read English at the same time in 1941. Amis recalled in his memoirs that ‘all Old English and nearly all Middle English works produced hatred and weariness in nearly everybody who studied them. The former carried the redoubled impediment of having Tolkien, incoherent and often inaudible, lecturing on it.’ Elsewhere he wrote that Tolkien ‘spoke unclearly and slurred the important words, and then he’d write them on the blackboard but keep standing between them and us, then wipe them off before he turned around.’ Larkin, on his part, objected to Old English as ‘filthy lingo’, even more so to being expected to admire Anglo-Saxon poetry, as well to the English syllabus as a whole, which at that time stopped with the Romantics. (Amis and Larkin quoted in Zachary Leader, The Life of Kingsley Amis (2006), p. 123. Both, nonetheless, took first class degrees.)

Although Desmond Albrow found Tolkien personally engaging (particularly as a fellow Roman Catholic), he did not attend any of Tolkien’s lectures ‘on the specious grounds that I found it hard to hear what he said’ (‘A Brush with Greatness’, Catholic Herald, 31 January 1997). Presumably Albrow attended at least one lecture by Tolkien, if he formed that impression at first hand, during the six months he spent at Oxford in 1943 or after his postwar return to his university education in 1947; if not, he acted on rumour. (Albrow admits that he never enjoyed Old English, and in general his interest in reading English was in literature rather than language.)

Adele Vincent heard Tolkien lecture on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the mid-1950s:

In his introduction to A Companion to the Gawain-Poet (ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1997, 1999 reprint), Derek Brewer recalled, from his time as an Oxford undergraduate in 1946, that Tolkien lectured on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ‘to a small group of devotees, confining himself entirely to textual cruces (often forgetting to tell us which line he was discussing), and doing obscure (to me) battle with some mysterious entity, prophetically as it may now seem, called something like “Gollancz”’ (p. 2), i.e. the Early English Text Society edition of Gawain edited by Sir Israel Gollancz – ‘no relation to Gollum’ (p. 2, note).

p. 739, l. 5: For ‘p. 117–18’ read ‘pp. 117–18’.

pp. 739–41, entry for Oxford English School: The critic Northrop Frye, who studied at Merton College, Oxford, recalled Tolkien’s lectures on Beowulf, which dealt ‘with a most insanely complicated problem which involves Anglo-Saxon genealogies, early Danish histories, monkish chronicles in Latin, Icelandic Eddas and Swedish folk-lore. Imagine my delivery at its very worst: top speed, unintelligible burble, great complexity of ideas and endless references to things unknown, mixed in with a lot of Latin and Anglo-Saxon and a lot of difficult proper names which aren’t spelled, and you have Tolkien on Beowulf’ (The Correspondence of Northrop Frye and Helen Kemp, 1932–1939, vol. 2 (1996), pp. 794–5).

p. 742, ll. 3–4 from bottom: For ‘Naval and Air Force cadets, Anthony Curtis, an RAF cadet’ read ‘Navy and Air Force cadets, Anthony Curtis, a Royal Air Force cadet’.

pp. 744–6, entry for The Oxford English School: Related to the theme of this essay is Tolkien’s poem Lit’ and Lang’, written while he was at *Leeds and later published in *Songs for the Philologists. In this there are ‘two little groups, / Called Lit’ and Lang’’, i.e. the Literature and Language sides of an English school curriculum. Lit’ does not like philology and ‘was lazy till she died, / Of homophemes’ (words of different meaning or spelling which require the same position of the lips – that is, Lit’ was too lazy to look at the words themselves). When doctors cut up the corpse of Lit’ ‘they couldn’t find the brain’. Lang’ does not mourn her death.

p. 747, l. 1, entry for Ralph S. Payton: For ‘d. 1916’ read ‘1894–1916’. R.S. Payton entered King Edward’s School in January 1906.

p. 747, entry for Wilfrid Hugh Payton: Add dates: ‘(1892–1965)’. King Edward’s School records give W.H. Payton’s year of birth as 1892. He entered the School in January 1904. In later years he was in the Indian Civil Service, and was appointed Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma in 1944.

p. 748, l. 16, entry for Pearl: After the sentence ending ‘. . . as a student in the English School at *Oxford’, add: ‘At Easter 1913, Tolkien inscribed his name in a 1910 printing of Charles Grosvenor Osgood’s edition of Pearl (first published 1906).’

p. 748, l. 13 from bottom: For ‘26 April’ read ‘?26 April’.

p. 754, entry for Perry-the-Winkle: One manuscript version of the precursor to this poem, The Bumpus, has been published in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 202–6.

pp. 754–9, entry for Philology: See further, Tom Shippey, ‘Scholars of Medieval Literature, Influence of’, in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), pp. 594–8; and Peter Gilliver, Edmund Weiner, and Jeremy Marshall, ‘The Word as Leaf: Perspectives on Tolkien as Lexicographer and Philologist’, in Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger, eds., Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration (2008).

p. 765, add entry:

pp. 766–71, entry for Poetry: See further, Tom Shippey, ‘Alliterative Verse by Tolkien’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006); Tom Shippey, ‘Tolkien’s Development as a Writer of Alliterative Poetry in Modern English’, Lembas Extra 2009: Tolkien in Poetry and Song (2009); and Julian Tim Morton Eilmann, ‘I Am the Song: Music, Poetry, and the Transcendent in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth’, in Light beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work (2011).

p. 771, ll. 21–3, entry for Poetry: We wrote: ‘Tolkien also began a translation of the Middle English Owl and the Nightingale, but probably did not complete it.’ That Tolkien did not complete this translation to his satisfaction is certain; he said in 1967, unambiguously, that he was ‘giv[ing] up the task’. That Tolkien had a translation apparently complete by 8 April 1932, however, is indicated by C.S. Lewis in a letter to his brother: see Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2 (2004), p. 75.

p. 783, entry for Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of ‘Beowulf’, final paragraph: The revision of Clark Hall’s translation was suggested to Allen & Unwin by Tolkien’s student, *Elaine Griffiths, who also suggested Tolkien as its editor. Tolkien was contacted about this by Allen & Unwin probably, as we say, early in 1936, though possibly in late 1935. The letter sent by C.A. Furth of Allen & Unwin on 30 March 1936 (see Chronology addenda and corrigenda) indicates that they were writing to Tolkien about the matter ‘again’.

p. 788, l. 14 from bottom: For ‘Idril’ read ‘Elwing’.

p. 794, l. 21: For ‘Based on the title character’ read ‘Developed from the title character’.

p. 794, entry for The Princess Ní: The poem was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 168–9.

p. 798, ll. 13–14: For ‘The Alphabet of Rúmil’ read ‘‘The Alphabet of Rúmil’’.

p. 798, add entries:

p. 799, add entry:

p. 801, l. 12: For ‘Etymological Notes on the Ósanwe-kenta’ read ‘Etymological Notes on the Ósanwe-kenta’.

p. 809, l. 3 from bottom: For ‘scared’ read ‘sacred’.

p. 814, entry for Francis Vincent Reade: For ‘c. 1895’, l. 16 from bottom, read ‘1874’. An article on Father Vincent appeared in the Oratory Parish Magazine in early 2007 (‘Francis Vincent Reade’, pp. 2–3; no. 1 of the series ‘Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory’). A man of small stature, he was known as ‘Father Vincent’ to avoid confusion with Father Francis (Morgan): it was an Oratory custom that no two members of the community should have the same name. Father Vincent entered Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1894, earned his B.A. (second-class Theology Tripos) in 1897, when he proceeded to attend Ely Theological College, and was awarded an M.A. in 1903. Although he had become a Priest of the Church of England in 1899, in 1904 he converted to Roman Catholicism and studied in Rome for ordination. He entered the noviciate of the Birmingham Oratory in 1906, and was ordained successively Deacon and Priest in 1908. His main work at the Oratory was as a teacher of religious education and English literature at St Philip’s Grammar School, and from 1910 to 1937 as Headmaster. From 1932 until 1947 he was Supervisor of the Oratory. Among his few published writings is the chapter ‘The Sentimental Myth’ in John Henry Newman: Centenary Essays (ed. Henry Tristram, 1945). A portrait of Father Vincent Reade, by Birmingham artist B. Fleetwood-Walker, is reproduced on this site.

pp. 814–22, entry for Reading: A.N. Wilson writes in his biography of C.S. Lewis (1990), p. 103, that ‘it was another medievalist, under Tolkien’s influence, who gave utterance to the view that “Literature stops in 1100; after that there’s only books,” but they were sentiments which in a crude way echoed Tolkien’s own position’. The medievalist in question was Alistair Campbell (see Reader’s Guide, pp. 145–6), a friend to Tolkien but not ‘under his influence’, and the remark was made only in jest, as part of the continuing feud in the Oxford English School between Literature and Language. Unfortunately there are many Internet sites on which the quotation ‘Literature stops in 1100’ is wrongly attributed to Tolkien, who neither said nor believed it.

In A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Road to Faërie (1997), Verlyn Flieger notes that Tolkien read An Experiment with Time by J.W. Dunne, in its revised and enlarged third edition (1934). His copy, in the possession of Christopher Tolkien, ‘contains his interleaved notes and comments, jotted in the course of reading, on Dunne’s ideas [on time and dreams] and the theory he derived from them . . . not always in complete agreement with Dunne’ (p. 47).

pp. 816–17, entry for Reading: In his interview given to Henry Resnick in 1966 and published in Niekas 18 (Spring 1967), Tolkien referred to The Lord of the Flies by William Golding as ‘dreary stuff’ (p. 38).

p. 817, l. 1, entry for Reading: For a discussion of perceived parallels between John Buchan’s writings and Tolkien’s, see Tom Shippey, ‘Buchan, John (1875–1940)’, in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006).

p. 817, l. 6, entry for Reading: For ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ read ‘Finnegans Wake’.

pp. 817–18, entry for Reading: Further comments by Tolkien on science fiction and fantasy may be found in Daphne Castell, ‘The Realms of Tolkien’, New Worlds (November 1966), p. 148.

p. 818, l. 19 from bottom: For ‘dislike’ read ‘distaste’.

p. 818, ll. 6–7 from bottom, entry for Reading: David Doughan has convinced us that Tolkien’s reference to ‘Joad’ in fact is not to Steinbeck’s novel but to the philosopher and radio personality C.E.M. Joad, who was caught travelling by rail without a ticket.

p. 820, ll. 13–14, entry for Reading: According to Dr. Deborah A. Higgens in Anglo-Saxon Community in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (2014), pp. 59–60, and based on a telephone interview with Priscilla Tolkien conducted 7 February 2012, Tolkien was ‘thrilled’ to receive on subscription the March 1940 number of Antiquity, which featured the ship-burial at Sutton Hoo (discovered 1939).

p. 821, l. 28: As a point of internal style, delete the ‘(1992)’ following ‘The Tolkien Family Album’.

p. 821, l. 6 from bottom: For ‘that acquired them’ read ‘that he acquired them’.

p. 822, l. 18 from bottom: Add after ‘See also’: ‘*Attacks of Taste’.

p. 822, l. 15 from bottom, entry for Recordings: The British Library archival sound recordings website, which includes streaming audio files of the two Tolkien Linguaphone segments, dates these to July 1929.

p. 823, ll. 6–8 from bottom, entry for Recordings: The 2001 collection adds only three poems from the 1967 recording session not included on Poems and Songs of Middle Earth, The Sea-Bell having been included earlier but not listed among the tracks on the album sleeve.

p. 824, l. 4, entry for Recordings: The ‘second, professionally recorded interview by Gueroult’ was, we feel certain, the one conducted on 20 January 1965 (see Chronology, p. 628). This ‘published’ interview has been erroneously dated to 1964 in many sources, including the Audio-Forum cassette liner notes and, thereby, the Descriptive Bibliography (p. 385), but the sequence we set out in the Chronology is based on BBC correspondence and official records in their Written Archives, as well as on private notes by Tolkien. Entries in the British Library’s Sound and Moving Image catalogue give the 12 November 1964 interview with Tolkien as 42 minutes, 28 seconds in length, but combined with an interview with ‘Washbourn’, and the interview of 20 January 1965 as 11 minutes, 44 seconds.

p. 826, entry for Rednal (Worcestershire): An early photograph of Rednal Hill is reproduced in the Library of Birmingham’s online ‘Tolkien Gallery’ (http://www.libraryofbirmingham.com/tolkiengallerypage).

pp. 826–7, entry for The Reeve’s Tale: Tolkien’s version of 1939 has been reprinted in Tolkien Studies 5 (2008), pp. 173–83.

pp. 828–40, entry for Religion: Irene Tolkien Cook (the first wife of Michael George Tolkien) defended Tolkien in Amon Hen 162 (March 2000) against a letter which had called him a bigot in regard to his religion. Tolkien did not accept ‘both Roman Doctrine and Roman Dogma entirely without question’, but ‘was in constant debate with family and friends about his growing alarm and sense of betrayal by Rome, especially at the time of the Second Vatican Council’ with the loss of the Latin Mass and changes to the liturgy (p. 24).

See further, Bradley J. Birzer, ‘Catholicism, Roman’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), pp. 85–9.

The Ring and the Cross: Christianity and the Writings of J.R.R. Tolkien (2011), ed. Paul E. Kerry, and Light beyond All Shadow: Religious Experience in Tolkien’s Work (2011), ed. Paul E. Kerry and Sandra Miesel, are useful collections of papers presenting various points of view regarding the influence of pagan sources on Tolkien (especially Northern mythology), the presence or absence of Christian religion in Tolkien’s writings, and if present, in what way that religion may be specifically Catholic. The Ring and the Cross is particularly notable for Paul E. Kerry’s introductory ‘Historiography of Christian Approaches to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings’, which provides a chronological, thematic overview covering nearly fifty years; for the civil and non-dogmatic way in which viewpoints are presented; for the knowledge of many (but not all) of the contributors of Tolkien’s own writings and those of other critics; and in general for the careful documentation of sources. The authors of Light beyond All Shadow, concerned primarily with ‘the sources and style of Tolkien’s Catholic imagination’ (to quote its cover blurb), in contrast tend to pay less attention to contrary evidence or opinions, though essays by Matthew Dickerson, Anne C. Petty, Julian Tim Morton Eilmann, and Russell W. Dalton take a wider view and make interesting points.

Priscilla Tolkien does not remember her father ‘ever intent on speaking of dogma or doctrines in intellectual or abstract terms. In fact, I do not think it was ever in his heart to write or speak of religion didactically: his mode was to express religious themes and moral questions through the medium of story-telling, as in the case of “Leaf by Niggle”’ (quoted in Andrea Monda and Wu Ming 4, ‘Tolkien the Catholic Philosopher?’, in Tolkien and Philosophy, ed. Roberto Arduini and Claudio A. Testi (2014), p. 86).

p. 829, ll. 6–9 from bottom, entry for Religion: John Garth notes that Exeter College, in recent years before Tolkien matriculated, ‘attracted more Catholic students than any other college’, and that those students ‘attended the Catholic Chaplaincy off St Aldates’ or St Aloysius’s in the Woodstock Road’ (Tolkien at Exeter College (2014), p. 7).

p. 829, ll. 4–5 from bottom, entry for Religion: John Garth (Tolkien at Exeter College (2014)) speculates that the ‘couple of Catholics’ were Anthony Shakespeare, a law student who had attended the Birmingham Oratory school, and B.J. Tolhurst, late of Stonyhurst School. Tolhurst died in 1917 of wounds received near Arras.

p. 830, ll. 12–13: For ‘He seems to have held office in the local circle’ read ‘He served as vice-president of the Oxford circle at its founding in 1943, alongside its president, Percival E. Hedges of St Aloysius’ parish, Oxford.’

p. 835, l. 1: For ‘an whence?’ read ‘and whence?’.

p. 835, l. 23: The word ‘Sea’ should be followed by a closing quotation mark.

p. 836, l. 3: The quotation mark after ‘Age’ should be single, not double.

p. 836, l. 24: For ‘The Road Goes On’ read ‘The Road Goes Ever On’.

pp. 846–7, entry for Richard William Reynolds: See further, Douglas A. Anderson, ‘Reynolds, R.W. (1867–1948), in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006). As a young man (and a Fabian), Reynolds was part of the close circle around the writer E. Nesbit, eventually becoming one of her lovers (Julia Briggs, in her biography of Nesbit, A Woman of Passion (1989), which has numerous references to Reynolds, writes that he ‘probably’ was one of Nesbit’s lovers, but this does seem likely); eventually he married Nesbit’s niece, Dorothea Deakin. After moving to Capri, Reynolds was part of a community which included writers Norman Douglas, Axel Munthe, and Francis Brett Young, as well as D.H. Lawrence when he came to visit.

p. 847, l. 13 from bottom: For ‘he and his wife’ read ‘he and his family’.

p. 848, l. 12 from bottom: For ‘R.A.F. Cadets’ read ‘Air Force cadets’.

p. 852, first full paragraph, entry for Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age: Add: ‘A useful analysis of these changes is Renée Vink, ‘The Parentage of Gil-galad: A Textual History’, Lembas Extra published within Lembas 145 (August 2010).

p. 859, l. 14: For ‘dates from 1925’ read ‘is dated ‘1925’’.

p. 873, entry for Mary Bertha Salu: Add following her name: ‘(1919–1994)’.

p. 873, l. 17, entry for Sarehole (Warwickshire): A photograph of Wake Green Road in 1900 may be seen on the J.R.R. Tolkien’s Childhood in Birmingham page of the Birmingham City Council website.

p. 875, entry for Sauron Defeated: Part One, ‘The End of the Third Age’, also reproduces Tolkien’s illustrations ‘Tower of Kirith Ungol’ and Orodruin, Mt Doom.

p. 878, l. 4: In ‘possibly to see his *Aunt Jane Neave’ delete ‘possibly’.

p. 878, ll. 6–8, entry for Scotland: On the place and date of writing The Grimness of the Sea, see our note above for p. 415.

p. 881, ll. 10–12 from bottom, entry for The Sea-Bell: Looney was reprinted in the expanded edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 252–55. Also in regard to Looney, although indeed, as we write (ll. 4–5 from bottom), ‘the “Elvish” element . . . is not present’, still there is an otherworldly quality to the poem, to which the narrator is carried in a boat ‘sail-less’ and ‘oar-less’.

p. 882, ll. 18–20 from bottom, entry for The Sea-Bell: The recording was included on the 1967 Caedmon album Poems and Songs of Middle Earth, and is so indicated on the LP label, but omitted from the track listing on the sleeve. It was also included in The J.R.R. Tolkien Audio Collection as we state.

pp. 883–4, entry for A Secret Vice: Numerous web pages (including Wikipedia), perpetuating an error in the uncritical way that web pages often do, describe A Secret Vice as an address delivered by Tolkien to the 1930 Esperanto Congress in Oxford. This seems to be a misreading of the history given by Christopher Tolkien in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays and followed by us in the Companion and Guide, which clearly dates Tolkien’s lecture after the 1930 Congress, which Tolkien mentions in the past tense.

p. 884, entry for Shadow-Bride: Line 13, for ‘first’ read ‘first?’. Lines 22–4, for ‘But a version . . . nothing more is known’ read ‘This version was published as The Shadow Man in the Annual of Our Lady’s School, Abingdon, no. 12 (1936), p. 9.’ The earlier version, The Shadow Man, was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 235–6.

p. 884, add entry:

p. 884, l. 9 from bottom: Begin new paragraph with ‘This volume’.

p. 885, ll. 17–18: Delete ‘between pp. 220 and 221’. This location applies to only some copies.

p. 886, l. 16: For ‘From The Shibboleth of Fëanor’ read ‘From The Shibboleth of Fëanor’.

p. 891, l. 6: For ‘bring’ read ‘brink’.

pp. 892–3, entry for ‘The Silmarillion’: We state that after The Trumpets of Faerie was rejected by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1916, ‘Tolkien seems to have made no further effort to publish it’. According to Douglas A. Anderson in his article ‘Publishing History’ in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), Tolkien ‘apparently’ offered it to the Swan Press while he was at Leeds in the early 1920s ‘and was again turned down’; and after he returned to Oxford ‘he made one further attempt, and in the spring of 1926 the Oxford publisher Basil Blackwell turned it down’ (p. 549). Anderson does not indicate his source or sources for these statements.

p. 894, l. 5: For ‘The Vale of Tol Sirion’ read ‘The Vale of Sirion’.

p. 897, ll. 8–10 from bottom, entry for ‘The Silmarillion’: By 21 August 1954, Allen & Unwin had promised to think about publishing ‘The Silmarillion’, if they recovered their costs on The Lord of the Rings; at that point, only the first of its three volumes had appeared.

p. 906–17, entry for The Silmarillion: In Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion (2009) Douglas Charles Kane gives a detailed account of how Christopher Tolkien compiled The Silmarillion from the diverse texts left by his father, a much fuller account than is given in the entries for individual chapters in the Reader’s Guide. Kane’s discussions of, and sometimes profound disagreement with, the choices Christopher made are based solely on published sources. In response to discussion arising from the publication of this book, Christopher Tolkien explained that even the History of Middle-earth volumes contain only a selection of what his father wrote. See also Christina Scull (with contributions by Wayne G. Hammond), ‘Reflections on The Silmarillion and Arda Reconstructed’, Beyond Bree, August 2009; and replies, Beyond Bree, September 2009. Debate on this book and subject also was conducted in online forums.

p. 907, l. 4: For ‘*Akallabeth’ read ‘*Akallabêth’.

p. 910, l. 5: For ‘has already returned’ read ‘had already returned’.

p. 911, l. 16 from bottom: For ‘with he more’ read ‘with more’.

pp. 933–5, entry for Sir Orfeo: In ‘Fantasy, Escape, Recovery, and Consolation in Sir Orfeo: The Medieval Foundations of Tolkienian Fantasy’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010), Thomas Honegger makes a (perhaps overly) expansive argument that ‘Sir Orfeo is likely to have shaped the development of Tolkien’s central theoretical concepts of Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, Enchantment, Eucatastrophe, and Consolation, as discussed in “On Fairy-stories” – and thus exerted (indirectly) a profound influence on Tolkien’s own literary writings, and on those of his successors’ (p. 117).

p. 934, entry for Sir Orfeo: In his article on Sir Orfeo in J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), as in his essay in Tolkien Studies 1, Carl F. Hostetter prefers to describe Tolkien’s 1944 Sir Orfeo as a ‘version’: ‘that is, neither a translation nor an edition but rather a thorough emendation of the Middle English text’ (Encyclopedia, p. 488).

pp. 938–42, entry for Geoffrey Bache Smith: Smith entered King Edward’s School in January 1905, the same month as Tolkien’s brother *Hilary. Like Tolkien, he earned distinction as a King Edward’s Scholar and was the recipient of School prizes.

See further, Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, their blog post ‘G.B. Smith: An Inventory’.

p. 940, entry for Geoffrey Bache Smith: For the first sentence of the final paragraph on this page, read: ‘After Smith’s death, Tolkien inherited some of his books, including Le Morte d’Arthur (vol. 1) by Sir Thomas Malory (London, 1889); Gwaith by Samuel Roberts (Llanuwchllyn, 1906); Hanes a Chan by J. Morgan Edwards (5th edn., Newport, 1908); Gwaith Twm o’r Nant by Thomas Edwards (Llanuwchllyn, 1909); and Essai sur la composition du roman gallois de Peredur by Mary Rhionnan Williams (Paris, 1909).’

p. 951, entry for Smoking: In his article ‘The Filial Duty of Christopher Tolkien’ (Sunday Times Magazine, 25 September 1977), Bill Cater recalled visiting J.R.R. Tolkien, who wandered ‘up and down, endlessly striking matches to light the pipe he was never without, and talking through it, and round it, and sometimes to it’. He also described Tolkien’s pipesmoking as ‘a pyrotechnic display in aid of Bryant and May [a leading manufacturer of matches]’.

According to Simon Tolkien (*Christopher Reuel Tolkien), his grandfather ‘was inseparable from his pipe, which he would constantly relight with Swan Vesta matches. Later he told me he never inhaled, except by accident, when he was riding his bicycle in Oxford and the wind was against him’ (‘My Grandfather’, The Mail on Sunday, 23 February 2003, reprinted on the author’s website).

Late in life, Tolkien obtained his tobacco from the Southern Cigar Company, 40 The Parade, Canford Cliffs, Poole. In March 1972 he purchased from them a pound of ‘Capstan’ tobacco in two-ounce tins. His grandson Adam Tolkien has said that Capstan Medium Navy Cut was Tolkien’s tobacco of choice, though he evidently knew and tried other brands as well. In a letter to Rayner Unwin, 8 April 1858, Tolkien commented that following his attendance at a ‘Hobbit dinner’ in the Netherlands, he had been sent pipes and tobacco by the Dutch firm of Van Rossem. Capstan Medium Navy Cut is a medium to mild blend of Virginia tobaccos, reportedly fast-burning.

p. 951, l. 16 from bottom: For ‘manages’ read ‘managed’.

p. 951, ll. 6–7 from bottom, entry for Smoking: The full citation of the article by Alan Smith is ‘A Shire Pleasure’, Pipes and Tobacco 5, no. 4 (Winter 2001), pp. 20–4.

pp. 952–3, ll. 9–10 from bottom, entry for Societies and clubs: For ‘Tolkien was a member by Summer Term 1909, and a corporal by 1910’ read ‘Tolkien was a member at its foundation, present in a group photograph at the cadets’ inspection by Field Marshal Earl Roberts on 4 April 1907. By 1910 he attained the rank of corporal.’ In the years just prior to the First World War, cadet and rifle corps were either established in Britain or reorganized with the aim of forming the basis of an effective national volunteer defence force. Lord Roberts was an advocate for this scheme because many men sent into the Boer War had not trained with a rifle and so were at a disadvantage. Associated with this was a call for patriotism.

pp. 954–5, entry for Societies and clubs: Unaccountably, we omitted to include Tolkien’s membership in the Exeter College Dialectical Society, mentioned by Carpenter in Biography. Meetings of the Dialectical Society featured scholarly papers on a variety of topics and – as its name suggests – the testing of truth through discussion. As an example of a paper presented to the Society during Tolkien’s years at Oxford, on 13 June 1912 John Scott Haldane, the Scottish physiologist and Fellow of New College, Oxford (also, father of scientist J.B.S. Haldane and author Naomi Mitchison), read ‘The Supposed Physical Basis of Life’, on the impossibility of explaining living organisms solely in terms of physics and chemistry. In Tolkien Studies 10 (2013) John Garth notes that there was a ‘notable overlap’ in membership between the Dialectical Society and the Apolausticks (see below in this entry), but no record of Tolkien in the society records – ‘but by no means all attendees were named in the minutes’ (p. 249). Garth gives five titles of other papers presented to the Society which he feels may have interested Tolkien: ‘The Problem of Evil’, ‘The Philosophy of History’ (by A.J. Toynbee), ‘A Philosophy of Fictions’, ‘Bull-roarers and High Gods’, and ‘Immortality’. We ourselves will investigate the society records when the opportunity allows.

p. 956, l. 1, entry for Societies and clubs: The name ‘Apolausticks’ is derived from apolaustic, ‘concerned with or wholly devoted to seeking enjoyment; self-indulgent’ (OED). John Garth has usefully looked more closely at the various members of the Apolausticks, originally all freshmen like Tolkien though of varying ages; see ‘Tolkien, Exeter College and the Great War’ (2008) and Tolkien at Exeter College (2014).

p. 956, final paragraph, entry for Societies and clubs: In the process of reducing the Reader’s Guide to a more manageable length, this paragraph was abridged more than it should have been. It would better begin:

pp. 958–9, entry for Societies and clubs: According to Jared Lobdell, in ‘Cave, The’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), relying on ‘conversations with the late [American literary critic] Cleanth Brooks in 1991–92’, The Cave also included among its members Brooks himself, bibliographer and Shakespeare scholar R.B. McKerrow, and ‘perhaps’ English literature authority F.P. Wilson. Lobdell speculates that Lord David Cecil was a member as well, and states that The Cave ‘still met at least up to [George] Gordon’s death in 1942’. Brooks is said to have learned from The Cave to concentrate ‘on what the text says . . . to find out what the text means’, and that ‘the biographer, the literary historian, and the lexicographer hold the keys necessary for unlocking a poem’s full meaning’ (p. 89). Brooks was a Rhodes Scholar at Exeter College, Oxford; he took his B.A. in 1931 and a B.Litt. in 1932. But as he was not a member of the English School faculty, it seems likely that he was not also an actual member of The Cave, but would have had contact with some of its known members, especially his tutor, Nevill Coghill. Although McKerrow published with Oxford University Press, and his work would have been well known in the Oxford English School, his connections were rather with London and Cambridge, so he too was probably not part of The Cave. Nor would F.P. Wilson likely have belonged to that group at least in the 1930s, as he was absent from Oxford from 1929 (when he left for Leeds) until 1947 (when he succeeded David Nichol Smith in a Merton chair). Although both George Gordon and Lord David Cecil could have been members of The Cave, we have no evidence to support Brooks’s (tentative) assertion or Lobdell’s speculation.

p. 958, second paragraph, entry for Societies and clubs: Tolkien was inducted into the Catenian Association in the period 1923–39, and remained a member until 1956. He was Founder Vice-President of the Oxford Circle in October 1944. At the Circle’s annual dinner in February 1945, Tolkien proposed a toast to the Provincial Council at least partly in Old English. He was President of the Circle in 1945–6.

p. 960, ll. 5–6 from bottom: For ‘on the fifth Tuesday’ read ‘usually on the fifth Tuesday’.

p. 961, l. 8: For ‘limited to twelve, or for a time fifteen’ read ‘limited, during Tolkien’s years of membership, to twelve or fourteen’.

p. 961, ll. 11–12, entry for Societies and clubs: Other members of the Oxford Dante Society during Tolkien’s years of membership were C.M. (from 1951, Sir Maurice) Bowra, Professor of Poetry at Oxford (1946–51) and the Warden of Wadham College; R.M. Dawkins; Professor A.P. d’Entrevès, the Serena Professor of Italian Studies at Oxford; Professor W.J. Entwistle, a scholar of Spanish and Portuguese studies; Professor Alfred Ewert, a scholar of early French literature; C.N. Hinshelwood, Dr Lee’s Professor of Chemistry; E.F. Jacob, Chichele Professor of Modern History (from 1950); historian J.E.A. Jolliffe; Dr Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Philosophy at Oxford; F.M. (Sir Maurice) Powicke, Regius Professor of History; B.H. Sumner, University Lecturer in eastern European history and the Warden of All Souls; and Clement C.J. Webb, a philosopher and theologian. Charles Williams died before Tolkien began to attend Dante Society meetings.

p. 961, ll. 22–3: For ‘Tolkien’s turn . . . 4 July 1947.’ read ‘Tolkien read only one paper to members, on 11 November 1947. A draft of this, concerning the word lusinga in Dante’s Purgatorio, Canto I, and Inferno, Canto XVIII, was finished by 4 July 1947.’

p. 963, l. 8 from bottom: For ‘Þe Wohunge ure Lauerd’ read ‘Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerd’.

p. 967, second paragraph, entry for Societies and clubs: Tolkien was also a member and, at least during its early years, an Honorary Vice-President of the Newman Association (founded 1942), a group of Roman Catholic professors and graduates of British universities.

p. 967–8, entry for Songs for the Philologists: A Dr Cyril Jackson, said to have studied at Leeds soon after Tolkien left for Oxford, recalled singing the ‘songs [set] to nursery rhyme tunes’ during ‘boozy evenings in the Senior Staff Common Room’, and referred to parties at which Tolkien, on visits to Leeds (late 1925–early 1926?), declaimed from Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon (letter, sold with a copy of Songs for the Philologists, Bloomsbury Auctions, London, 6 November 2003.)

Manuscripts of some of the songs by Tolkien are in the special collections library at the University of Leeds. Also in this collection, and possibly one of the songs not used for the University College, London booklet, is All Hail!, referring to the Last Judgement and sung to the tune of ‘Oh Dear What Can the Matter Be?’.

p. 967, ll. 5–6 from bottom: Another work printed by the students at University College, London was Some Thoughts on Examinations, a brief satire on the university examination system (‘God gave faculties, and the Devil sent Examiners’) attributed to *Walter Raleigh, the first Professor of English Literature at Oxford.

p. 968, l. 17: The song ‘The Mermaid’ is also known as ‘Married to a Mermaid’ and by its first line, ‘O ’twas in the broad Atlantic’.

p. 968, ll. 18, 21: The song ‘O’Reilly’ is also known as ‘Are You the O’Reilly Who Keeps This Hotel?’ after the first line of its chorus. According to a note in the inventory of the Tolkien–Gordon papers at the University of Leeds, Natura Apis was inspired by the writings of a hermit, Richard Rolle of Hampole.

p. 968, ll. 18–19 from bottom, entry for Songs for the Philologists: In regard to Frenchmen Froth, see further, the subsection ‘French’ under *Languages.

p. 968, ll. 15–17 from bottom, entry for Songs for the Philologists: In regard to Lit’ and Lang’, see further, our addendum to pp. 744–6.

pp. 969–70, entry for Source-hunting: In an interview with Daphne Castell, Tolkien commented that there was a tendency to teach the serious reader to deconstruct a work, and to find and analyze. ‘It seems to me comparable to a man who having eaten anything, from a salad to a complete and well-planned dinner, uses an emetic, and sends the results for chemical analysis’ (‘The Realms of Tolkien’, New Worlds 50 (November 1966), p. 146).

See further, essays in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: Sources of Inspiration, ed. Stratford Caldecott and Thomas Honegger (2008); Tolkien and His Sources: Critical Essays, ed. Jason Fisher (2011), especially Tom Shippey, ‘Introduction: Why Source Criticism?’, E.L. Risden, ‘Source Criticism: Background and Applications’, and Jason Fisher, ‘Tolkien and Source Criticism: Remarking and Remaking’; and The Hobbit and Tolkien’s Mythology: Essays on Revisions and Influences, ed. Bradford Lee Eden (2014).

p. 972, ll. 1–3, entry for South Africa: One of the photographs, inscribed and hand-tinted by Mabel Tolkien as a Christmas greeting, may also be seen on the J.R.R. Tolkien’s Childhood in Birmingham page of the Birmingham City Council website.

pp. 973–6, entry for Spiders: In a letter by Tolkien quoted in Richard A. Lupoff, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965), Tolkien remarked that he ‘developed a distaste’ for Burroughs’ character Tarzan ‘even greater than my distaste for spiders’, and that that Burroughs was not ‘in any way responsible for Shelob’ by influence of his siths or apt, huge Martian creatures of the ‘John Carter’ novels (pp. 246–7).

Contrary to Tolkien’s statement to W.H. Auden that he did ‘not dislike spiders particularly, and have no urge to kill them’, he is quoted as saying, in a 1961 interview with Jan Broberg, who had asked if anything frightened him: ‘I don’t like spiders. It’s not a pathological fear, but I rather won’t have anything to do with them’ (‘Tillsammans med Tolkien’ (‘Together with Tolkien’), in Broberg, I Fantasin Världar (1985), privately translated by Morgan Thomsen and Shaun Gunner).

pp. 977–80, entry for Staffordshire: Various online articles have claimed that Tolkien as a youngster spent holidays in Staffordshire with his family; that parts of Staffordshire, specifically the Moorlands, inspired the landscape of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; that he composed some of his writings (the Middle-earth stories are implied) at a pub in Leek now named The Swan, formerly called The Green Dragon (indeed, Tolkien’s ghost is said to appear at the pub from time to time); and that he promoted a Staffordshire connection for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. None of these assertions can be supported with anything but local folklore, which we suspect owes much to invention for the sake of promoting tourism.

p. 980, ll. 3–4, entry for Staffordshire: For ‘seems to have stayed there until joining her husband in *Oxford at the end of 1918’ read ‘stayed there until late July 1918’.

p. 980, entry for Courtenay Edward Stevens [REVISED]: C.E. Stevens received his B.A. in 1928. He completed his B.Litt. thesis in 1930; this was published as Sidonius Apollinaris and His Age in 1933. See further, The Ancient Historian and His Materials: Essays in Honour of C.E. Stevens on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Barbara Levick (1975).

The historian Paul Johnson,  a student at Magdalen College in the late nineteen-forties, recalls Stevens’ colourful background, his sense of humour, and his prodigious dedication to teaching in ‘When Dons Were Still Happy to Be Egregious’ (Spectator, 13 January 2010). R.C. Collingwood acknowledges Stevens’ assistance in his Roman Britain and the English Settlements (with J.N.L. Myres; 1936, 2nd edn. 1937), p. vii: ‘Several years ago I found in Mr. C.E. Stevens, now Fellow of Magdalen College, one who shared my sense of the profound importance of agrarian problems for the social and economic history of the Roman empire, and my conviction that hitherto the study of them had hardly begun.’

p. 981, entry for The Stone Troll: The earlier version published in Songs for the Philologists was reprinted in the extended edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (2014), pp. 193–5.

pp. 982–4, entry for Sub-creation: See further, Carl Phelpstead, ‘Myth-making and Sub-creation’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014), pp. 79–91.

pp. 984–5, entry for Suffield family: The elder John Suffield, father of Tolkien's maternal grandfather of the same name, began a drapery business in Old Lamb House, Bull Street, Birmingham, in 1826. In later decades the business expanded, and employed many members of the Suffield family. The younger John Suffield, the eldest son, appears to have been in charge. The business ultimately failed, however, possibly in 1889, and Tolkien’s grandfather became a brass founder before working, as he did until the age of eighty-seven, as a commercial traveller. A late photograph of Old Lamb House, with Tolkien’s grandparents in an upper window, may be seen on the J.R.R. Tolkien’s Childhood in Birmingham page of the Birmingham City Council website.

In an online exhibition devoted to Jane Suffield (i.e. Jane Neave), Maggie Burns notes that the Suffields were interested in literature and drama, and that the younger John Suffield was a member of the Central Literary Association and the Birmingham Dramatic and Literary Club. Further, this noncomformist family believed in education for women as well as for men, which helps to explain the notable learning and abilities of Mabel Suffield, Tolkien’s mother, and of her sister Jane.

p. 984, entry for Suffield family, first paragraph: For ‘His maternal grandfather . . . Rose (?1879–1886)’ read:

p. 984, l. 5 from bottom: For ‘1904’ read ‘1904, see *Mabel Tolkien’.

p. 985, ll. 18–19: For ‘Mabel in hospital’ read ‘Mabel was in hospital’.

p. 995, ll. 13–14: For ‘Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals and Related Writings’ read ‘Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals and Related Writings: Part Two’.

p. 999, l. 13: For ‘Völsungasaga’ read (for consistency) ‘Völsunga Saga’.

p. 1004, add entry:

p. 1007, entry for Tinfang Warble, first paragraph [REVISED]: Replace with: ‘Poem, first published in the Inter-University Magazine (University Catholic Societies’ Federation of Great Britain) for May 1927. Reprinted in *The Book of Lost Tales, Part One (1983), p. 108.’

p. 1008, second paragraph, entry for Tolkien family: For ‘John Benjamin Tolkien . . . of *Birmingham’ read:

p. 1009, first full paragraph, entry for Tolkien family [REVISED]: Replace with:

p. 1009, second full paragraph, entry for Tolkien family: The ‘Myers Newcastle Time Line’ website by Alan Myers states that Tolkien visited Newcastle upon Tyne in each of the years 1910–1912, but offers no evidence for these dates.

Christine Ahmed, in the article ‘William Mountain: A Northern Industrialist, Now Forgotten’ and in the article ‘Tolkien in Newcastle’, provides details of the life of Tolkien’s uncle William Mountain, an industrialist who for twenty-four years led the company Ernest Scott and Mountain, maker of electric lighting for mills and factories, as well as pumps, dynamos, and high-speed engines for railways and collieries. In 1913, the firm having expanded too quickly, it was bought by C.A. Parsons. Mountain became a consultant, went into a partnership with his son and son-in-law, and worked in a wire manufacturing business. He was a member of the local Literary and Philosophical Society, and in 1925 became a Vice-President of the North East Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers (now the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers).

Mountain and his family lived in the Newcastle upon Tyne area at 9 St George’s Terrace, Jesmond; in South Street, Hexham; at ‘The Hermitage’, a twenty-room house in Sheriff Hill, Gateshead; and in Sydenham Terrace, Newcastle. According to Ahmed, Tolkien’s paternal grandmother (i.e. Mary Jane Tolkien) ‘stayed with the Mountains from 1911 to 1915 when she died’, but gives no source for this statement; a Mary J. Tolkien is, however, listed in official death records as having died at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1915. William and Grace Mountain are buried in Jesmond Old Cemetery in Newcastle; an article on the cemetery’s website illustrates their joint gravestone, which gives his date of death as 26 January 1928, and hers in March 1947 (we cannot make out the day from the photo).

Ahmed probably oversteps in saying that Grace Mountain was with Mabel Tolkien when she died in 1904 – Carpenter’s account has only May Incledon, Mabel’s sister, and Father Francis Morgan at Mabel’s side at the time of her death, both of whom, unlike Mabel’s sister-in-law Grace, lived nearby. And it is surely mere speculation for Ahmed to conclude that the character of William Mountain, the northern industrialist, ‘resonates with some aspects of the character of the brilliant, power-hungry, but defeated Saruman’ – which aspects, she does not specify. William Mountain, she complains, ‘was a man as passionate about his world of mines and machines as Tolkien was about his own abstract world, and both had huge vision. But the personality clash and perhaps over-dominance of the Uncle who had been so hugely successful when Tolkien was young, may have been a cause for him not being mentioned at all in Tolkien biographies.’ We find this to be as unlikely as the notion that ‘Tolkien would have got an inside understanding of mines [from his uncle] to prepare for his “Mines of Moria”; his knowledge would have not just come from Birmingham’s “Black Country” where he lived, but also from the then heartland of the mining industry in England – the North-East of England.’ There is, of course, a great deal of difference between the manufacturer of equipment for mines and an actual miner, and between an English mine and the mansion of Khazad-dûm.

p. 1011, l. 17 from bottom: For ‘an critical edition’ read ‘a critical edition’.

pp. 1012–16, entry for Edith Mary Tolkien [REVISED]: In the 1891 U.K. Census, Edith Bratt, age two, is recorded as ‘a boarder’ in the house of George and Emma Clifford, 2 Matson Place, Barton St Mary, Gloucester. In the 1901 Census, now age twelve, she is recorded as living with Frances Bratt, a ‘wholesale stationer’, as her ‘niece’.

p. 1012, l. 10 from bottom, entry for Edith Mary Tolkien: For ‘and Alfred Frederick Warrilow’ read ‘and, probably, Alfred Frederick Warrilow’. Humphrey Carpenter states in Biography, pp. 38–9, that Edith’s father ‘was not named on the birth certificate, though [her mother] Frances preserved his photograph, and his identity was known to the Bratt family’, and ‘if Edith knew the name of her father, she never passed it on to her own children’. And yet, the surname ‘Warrilow’ attached to Edith’s father has come down in the Tolkien family and was told to us by Priscilla Tolkien, whom we have found throughout our research a reliable source. According to the 1881 U.K. census, Fannie (i.e. Frances) Bratt of Wolverhampton lived at that time at 41 Heathfield Road in the Birmingham suburb of Handsworth, employed as a governess in the household of Alfred Frederick Warrilow, his wife Charlotte H., and their then five-year-old daughter, Nellie Elizabeth. If the family identification of ‘Warrilow’ is correct, and the Frances Bratt of the census listing was (as seems certain) Edith’s mother, then her employer, Alfred, is the most likely person to attach to the name. This conclusion is supported, if only circumstantially (pending further research), by a record of a filing of divorce by Charlotte Harrison Warrilow against Alfred Frederick Warrilow in 1888, which would have been the year of Frances Bratt’s pregnancy (Edith was born on 21 January 1889).

Alfred Warrilow was born on 6 March 1842 in Clerkenwell, London, but baptized on 20 May 1842 in Birmingham. His parents were Alfred John Warrilow (1818–1869) and Elizabeth, née Scott (b. 1818). He died in 1891 in Solihull, Warwickshire. In E.R. Kelly’s 1879 Post Office Directory of Birmingham, Alfred Warrilow is listed as a ‘colored paper dealer, printer, stationer & [general] paper dealer’ at 101 and 102 Great Hampton Street and 52 Constitution Hill. Frances Bratt (1859–1902) was the daughter of William Bratt (1824–1891), a shoemaker, and his wife Jane, née Grove (1830–1904). (We are grateful to Jere Markkanen for additional genealogical information, and for an inquiry which led us to conduct further research.)

In J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend (2012), Colin Duriez notes that Frances Bratt served as executrix of the estate of Alfred Frederick Warrillow. He quotes from the U.K. Index of Wills and Administration (National Probate Register) for 1891: ‘23 April. The Will of Alfred Frederick Warrillow late of Hudson House Strechford [i.e. Stechford] in the Parish of Yardley in the County of Worcester and of 101 Great Hampton street in the City of Birmingham Paper Dealer who died 12 March 1891 at Hudson House was proved at Worcester by Frances Bratt of Hudson House Spinster the sole Executrix.’ (Warrilow – we have now found the surname in official records spelled both Warrillow and Warrilow, and will arbitrarily prefer the latter – is said elsewhere to have died in Solihull, a larger residential area just to the south of Stechford; both are suburban areas east of Birmingham proper.) This is very remarkable. Although Frances left the Warrilow household after she became pregnant, she must later have resumed contact with Alfred – after all, as seems certain, the father of her child – and must have been on sufficiently close terms that he named her sole executrix in his will. Duriez comments (p. 33): ‘While there is no evidence that Warrillow provided Frances with any of the substantial money he left, in law she could benefit from his will as Executrix. He may have had liabilities: we know from newspaper reports that his company in earlier years had gone through financial difficulties. Humphrey Carpenter reveals that Edith had inherited land in “various parts of Birmingham”, which produced a subsistence income.’ As before, this bears further investigation: in particular, what were the terms of Warrilow’s will?

pp. 1016–17, entry for Hilary Arthur Reuel Tolkien: Brief stories and reminiscences by Hilary Tolkien, as recorded by him in a notebook, have been published in Black & White Ogre Country: The Lost Tales of Hilary Tolkien (2009): ‘The earliest notes recall a time when Hilary was only five years old. He gathered together his thoughts, on and off, for the next forty-five years. Much later, after World War II, he wrote them all down’ (p. iv). Hilary recalled the Black and White Ogres when interviewed late in life by Humphrey Carpenter: see Biography, p. 21. Of his service in the First World War, Hilary recorded in his notebook that he trained ‘on the fringe of Black and White Ogre Country’ (i.e. near Birmingham) and then in Malvern, before proceeding to the ‘Somme, Vimy Ridge, Arras, Sanctuary Wood, Oppy Wood, Italy, Nieppe Forest, Merville, Amiens, Namur, Longeval, Falfemont Farm, Bethune, Ypres, Bray sur Somme, Albert, Mons, [and] Charleroi’ (pp. 50–1). He returned home on his birthday, 17 February 1919. Additional photographs of Hilary are reproduced in Black and White Ogre Country, pp. 67, 68 (alongside one of his wife Magdalen), and 72 (together with his brother and family members).

In regard to Hilary’s years at King Edward’s School, it should be added that although he was no scholar like his brother, nonetheless he usually maintained a respectable rank within his class.

A photograph of Hilary as a young man may be seen on the ‘J.R.R. Tolkien’s Childhood in Birmingham’ page of the Birmingham City Council website.

p. 1018, l. 8 from bottom, entry for Mabel Tolkien: For ‘one of six children’ read ‘one of seven children’.

pp. 1018–20, entry for Mabel Tolkien: According to Priscilla Tolkien in an interview recorded by Ann Bonsor (see Reader’s Guide, p. 114), Mabel Suffield before her marriage had been a ‘governess’. In the nineteenth century governess could mean, as it does today, ‘a woman employed to teach children in a private household’, whether resident in that place (a ‘private governess’) or not (a ‘daily governess’), but also (without further definition) ‘a school teacher’. (In the 1881 U.K. Census, the occupation of Arthur Tolkien’s sisters Grace and Florence is recorded as ‘Private Teacher’, which we assume to have the same meaning.) A good account of the Victorian governess, one of the few acceptable (if socially problematic) occuptations for unmarried middle-class women of that period, is given on this website. Mabel’s experience as a governess, however, could not have been extensive before she left England, at the age of twenty-one, to join her fiancé in the Orange Free State.

pp. 1020–21, entry for Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien: See also the ‘autobiographical essay’ by Michael George Tolkien, on his website, sections 2–3.

p. 1021, l. 10: Michael George Tolkien has a personal website which includes some of his poetry and essays. Some of the latter are concerned with his grandfather’s life and works. He prefers ‘Michael’ to ‘Michael George’.

p. 1022, final paragraph: See addendum for p. 108, final paragraph.

p. 1032, l. 5: For ‘set a known geographic environment’ read ‘set in a known geographic environment’.

p. 1038, entry for Translations [REVISED]: Final paragraph, l. 12, for ‘Ron Pirson, ed.’ read ‘Mark T. Hooker’. (Hooker’s ‘Round Two’ article supplements his earlier ‘Dutch Samizdat: The Mensink-van Warmelo Translation of The Lord of the Rings’, published in Translating Tolkien.) See also Hooker, ‘A Newly Revised Dutch Edition of The Lord of the Rings’, translation journal 9, no. 1 (January 2005), and Renée Vink, ‘In de Ban van de Ring: Old and New Fashions of a Translation’, Lembas Extra (2007). Also notable is Nils Ivar Agøy, ‘Things to Remember When Translating Tolkien’, Lembas Extra (2007).

pp. 1039–40, entry for Travel and transport: Glenn Edward Sadler (‘“Mr. Bliss” Takes Tolkien on a Trip’, San Diego Union, 6 March 1983) recalled Warren Lewis telling him (probably with some hyperbole) that ‘the entire Oxford community was relieved when Professor Tolkien decided to give up driving his “motor car”’, as it reminded many of (the reckless) Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows.

pp. 1045–7, entry for Vincent Trought: Trought entered King Edward’s School in March 1902. Like Tolkien, he earned distinction as a King Edward’s Scholar and was the recipient of School prizes.

p. 1047, l. 2 from bottom: For ‘(Túrin), passes’ read ‘(Túrin) passes’ (without a comma).

p. 1054, l. 19 from bottom: For ‘Beleg’ read ‘Túrin’.

p. 1064, entry for Edward Oswald Gabriel Turville-Petre: A bibliography of Turville-Petre’s writings, by his wife Joan, was published in Speculum Norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre, ed. Ursula Dronke, et al. (1981), pp. 506–8.

pp. 1064–5, entry for Joan Elizabeth Turville-Petre: Add dates: ‘(1911–2006)’. An appreciation of Turville-Petre was published in Saga-Book 30 (2006) following her death, by T. T.-P. (presumably Thorlac Turville-Petre, her eldest son) and D. T.-P. This notes that she was much affected by the death of her husband in 1978 and, to occupy her mind in addition to teaching, ‘she put together an edition of the Old English biblical poem Exodus, based on lecture notes left by her former teacher, J.R.R. Tolkien. She had no affection for this book, published in 1981, which was always associated with a miserable period in her life. How ironic that this little book is now so sought after by Tolkien fans!’ (p. 99). Turville-Petre was a Tutor and Fellow at Somerville College, giving up her fellowship reluctantly only after the birth of her third child. Later, having left Oxford for Aylsham, she involved herself in the examination of medieval Norfolk documents and published studies on the origins of Norfolk place-names and personal names. A bibliography of her writings was compiled by Patrick Stiles for the Old English Newsletter.

p. 1067, l. 19: For ‘in Oxford, then as the representative of Allen & Unwin in the Midlands and East Anglia. Later he spent’ read ‘in *Oxford. Later, following national service, he was the representative of Allen & Unwin in the Midlands and East Anglia, and spent’.

p. 1068, l. 22: For ‘Minas Tirith”’ (with a double closing quotation mark) read ‘Minas Tirith’’ (with a single closing quotation mark).

p. 1076, l. 9: For ‘1969’ read ‘1959’.

p. 1076, entry for ‘Variation D/L in Common Eldarin’: We now feel that ‘The Problem of Lhûn’ should have been given a separate entry, as the manuscript is distinct from the much later ‘Variation’.

p. 1076, l. 11: For ‘Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals and Related Writings’ read ‘Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals and Related Writings: Part Two’.

p. 1079, l. 20: For ‘written his father’ read ‘written by his father’.

pp. 1083–4, entry for John Barrington Wain: See further, David Gerard, John Wain: A Bibiliography (1987; supplement 1996), and Elizabeth Hatziolou, John Wain: A Man of Letters (1997).

p. 1085, entry for Wales: See further, Carl Phelpstead, Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (2011).

p. 1085, l. 6: For ‘in Trywn Llanbedrog’ read ‘near Trywn Llanbedrog’.

pp. 1091–3, entry for War: In relation to our section on the First World War it would have been useful to quote, as we do elsewhere in the Reader’s Guide, Tolkien’s comment in his Foreword to the second edition (1965) of The Lord of the Rings: ‘As the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.’ It is generally thought that he was referring to Robert Q. Gilson and Geoffrey Bache Smith, and perhaps also to other boyhood friends from King Edward’s School, Birmingham. But it is worth noting that of the 771 men from Exeter College, Oxford who served in the Great War, 143 were killed, 113 of them on the western front; and that of the 59 who, like Tolkien, matriculated in 1911, 23 (or 39%) perished, the highest casualty rate of any group by year. Those Exonians who came up in 1912 fared little better, with 18 (34%) killed out of 53. University students often became junior officers, who were expected to lead by example as their men went into battle, and so were exposed to disproportionate peril. It is no exaggeration to say that Tolkien himself might have perished had he recovered sufficiently from trench fever to return to the trenches.
      An account of Exeter College men who gave their lives during the war was compiled by Robert Malpass, Exeter College Oxford Roll of Honour 1914–1918. This also includes an illuminating article by J.R. Maddicott, ‘“An Infinitesimal Part in Armageddon”: Exeter College and the First World War’, reprinted from the Exeter College Association Register for 1998.

p. 1099, l. 16: For ‘then rented’ read ‘they rented’.

p. 1102, l. 16 from bottom: For ‘The Silver Chair’ read ‘The Silver Stair’.

p. 1103, l. 3: For ‘Order of the Golden Dawn’ read ‘Fellowship of the Rosy Cross (a breakaway faction of the Order of the Golden Dawn)’. Williams was a member until at least 1928.

p. 1104, entry for Charles Walter Stansby Williams: In ?November 1943 Tolkien wrote a long poem beginning ‘Our dear Charles Williams many guises shows’: see further (in Addenda), *A Closed Letter to Andrea Charicoryides Surnamed Polygrapheus, Logothete of the Theme of Geodesia in the Empire, Bard of the Court of Camelot, Malleus Malitiarium, Inclinga Sum Sometimes Known as Charles Williams.

p. 1105, entry for Charles Walter Stansby Williams: Another significant book concerning the works of Charles Williams is Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration by Gavin Ashenden (2008).

pp. 1105–7, entry for Christopher Luke Wiseman’: Wiseman entered King Edward’s School in March 1905.

p. 1107, fourth paragraph, entry for Christopher Luke Wiseman: An additional photograph of Christopher Wiseman is reproduced in John Garth, ‘J.R.R. Tolkien and the Boy Who Didn’t Believe in Fairies’, Tolkien Studies 7 (2010), p. 283.

p. 1107, l. 6 from bottom: For ‘1904 year’ read ‘1904’.

p. 1108, ll. 14–19, entry for Women and marriage: For ‘Tolkien stayed with his Aunt Jane. . . . In later years he sent her . . .’ read ‘Tolkien visited his Aunt Jane in Scotland at least twice during 1909–11, while she was Lady Warden of University Hall at St Andrews. It was through Jane that he joined the *Brookes-Smith family on a walking tour of *Switzerland in 1911. In following years, he made several visits to *Gedling, where Jane and Hilary Tolkien were working on Phoenix and Manor Farms. Later Tolkien sent Jane . . .’

p. 1112: In regard to Tolkien’s disapproval of his son Michael’s interest in Joan Griffiths, see also comments by Michael George Tolkien in his ‘autobiographical essay’, on his website, sections 2–3.

pp. 1116–23, entry for Women and marriage, subsection ‘Women in Tolkien’s Fiction’: In his interview with Daphne Castell (‘The Realms of Tolkien’, New Worlds, November 1966), Tolkien replied to the criticism ‘that there is not much (or not enough) romance in the “Lord of the Rings”’:

p. 1117, l. 3 from bottom: For ‘one who has rode’ read ‘one who rode’.

p. 1123, first paragraph, entry for Women and marriage: Add to references: David Doughan, ‘Women, Oxford and Tolkien’, Mallorn 45 (Spring 2008), and Angela Nicholas, ‘Female Descent in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth Mythology’, Amon Hen 252 (March 2015).

p. 1123, l. 13: For ‘ed. by’ read ‘ed.’

pp. 1125–6, entry for Joseph Wright: See further, Chris Sladen, ‘Idle Scholar Who Brought Local Language to Book’, Oxford Today 22, no. 3 (Trinity 2010).

pp. 1126–30, entry for Writing systems: See further, Arden R. Smith, ‘Alphabets, Invented’, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006); and ‘Pre-Fëanorian Alphabets’ in Parma Eldalamberon 16 (2006), pp. 5–51, and 18 (2009), pp. 110–49, ed. Arden R. Smith. The latter presents facsimiles of documents by Tolkien, with commentary and notes. The sixteen documents discussed in Part 1, divided into the ‘Qenyatic group’, ‘Falassin group’, and ‘Noriac group’, are presumed to date from the mid- to late 1920s. Smith notes, however, that there is ‘no clear indication that the present alphabets could not have existed in the same linguistic conception as the earlier Tengwar, and they may thus date from as late as the early 1930s, though this seems unlikely’ (Parma Eldalamberon 16, p. 6). Smith comments in Part 2 that these show that ‘some of the Elvish alphabets created by Tolkien in the late 1920s had achieved the same systematic arrangement of stems and bows that would later characterize the primary letters of the Fëanorian script. What would later be known as the additional letters, however, still had forms quite unlike their later counterparts in the Tengwar. The documents in [Part 2] show further examples of this state of affairs . . . [and] almost certainly date from the latter half of the 1920s’ (p. 110). Part 2 is devoted to documents designed for writing in English, seven in the ‘Angloquenya group’ and one inscribed ‘Qenyatic. English use (1929)’ (p. 144).

p. 1128, l. 17: For ‘The Alphabet of Rúmil’ read ‘‘The Alphabet of Rúmil’’.

p. 1128, ll. 23–4: For ‘The Valmaric Script: Documents by J.R.R. Tolkien’ read ‘‘The Valmaric Script’’.

p. 1129, l. 13: For ‘Early Runic Documents’ read ‘‘Early Runic Documents’’.

p. 1134, entry for Yorkshire: Line 8, for ‘probably moved’ read ‘moved’. Line 9, for ‘nearby Hornsea’ read ‘nearby Hornsea, and later that summer to Withernsea’. Edith and Jennie lived at 1 Bank Terrace in Hornsea, identified by Phil Mathison as having been owned by a family named Shepherd, and at 76 Queen Street in Withernsea, a property owned by a Robert James Bishop. They left Withernsea for Cheltenham evidently in late August 1917. At one point in July 1917, Tolkien briefly resided at a house with the name ‘Waverley’ in Cliff Road, Hornsea. Line 20, for ‘In late May or early June’ read ‘In ?late May or ?early June’. See further, Phil Mathison, Tolkien in East Yorkshire, 1917–1918 (2012).