Addenda and Corrigenda to
the 50th anniversary edition of
The Lord of the Rings (2004–5)

p. vii, l. 12 after titling: For ‘108’ read ‘109’.

p. xiii, l. 22: For ‘changed in 1965’ read ‘changed to 1965’.

p. xv, l. 14: For ‘assitance’ read ‘assistance’.

p. xv, l. 13 from bottom: For ‘decribed’ read ‘described’.

p. xix, l. 11: For ‘Yuval Kfir’ read ‘Yuval Welis’.

p. xx, l. 17: For ‘felicitous - subtle’ (with a hyphen) read ‘felicitous – subtle’ (with an en dash).

p. xx, final line: For ‘check copied’ read ‘check copies’.

p. 8, l. 3: For ‘There is another astonishing thing’ read ‘There is another thing’. The word ‘astonishing’ erroneously entered here (it is correct in the line following) in the HarperCollins resetting of 1994.

p. 27, l. 20: The en dash at the beginning of this line should be followed by a space.

p. 50, Ring inscription: Xu Zhan has pointed out to us that the centre stroke of the final character of the second line of the Ring inscription has appeared as broken in printings of The Fellowship of the Ring since the mid-1990s. As noted in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, the inscription reproduced in 2004 printings of the 50th anniversary edition is incorrect, taken from earlier, rejected lettering by Tolkien.

p. 158, footnote: The (volume number) ‘III’ is superfluous in an edition with continuous pagination (and, of course, for editions in one volume).

p. 159, stanzas beginning ‘They rolled the Man slowly up the hill’: Two stanzas have been pushed together. There should be a space following the line ‘and a dish ran up with the spoon’.

p. 169, l. 7 from bottom: The greeting of the letter, ‘Dear Frodo,’ should not be indented.

p. 170, l. 9: The first line of the poem (‘All that is gold does not glitter,’) should be indented.

p. 304: Xu Zhan has called our attention also to a small dot above the letter within the Doors of Durin illustration. This is an artefact from repeated uses of the image, and not a mark intended by Tolkien.

p. 367, l. 13 after titling: For ‘They all resolved’ read ‘They are all resolved’.

p. 373, l. 8: For ‘come to bid our’ read ‘come to bid you our’.

p. 756, ll. 19–21: The sentence ‘“I am,” said Pippin’ should be run on with Gandalf’s dialogue in the preceding paragraph. This was the case in the first edition of The Return of the King and for many years thereafter, until it was separated in the 1994 HarperCollins resetting. The separate paragraph persisted into the 2002 HarperCollins edition given us as our copy-text for 2004, and as this was not a point previously noticed, and there was no issue of comprehension whether the sentence was run on or not – indeed, normal English practice would have it separated – we gave it no thought when producing the anniversary edition. In his manuscripts and typescripts, however, Tolkien consistently has Pippin’s dialogue run on, perhaps to show a quick (nervous?) response to Gandalf’s question, and this would suggest that the sentence should be returned to its former position, ‘standard practice’ notwithstanding. (Tolkien uses a similar, though not identical, device in Book I, Chapter 1, during the ‘long-expected party’, where Bilbo’s comments to the gathering are set in italics, followed by comments from the crowd run on.)

p. 823, l. 26: For ‘war;’ read ‘war,’. A comma was mistakenly replaced by a semicolon in the resetting of 1994.

p. 837, l. 3: For ‘Meriadoc? Just’ read ‘Meriadoc? ‘Just’, adding a quotation mark at the beginning of Merry’s thought. The mark was overlooked in the resetting of 1994.

p. 977, l. 19: For ‘Fréalaf’ read ‘Fréaláf’.

p. 1033, l. 19 after titling: For ‘see Vol. I p. 4 and III p. 1112’ read ‘see pp. 4 and 1112’.

p. 1038, l. 10: Je Yun Lee has commented that since Arveleg was slain when the Witch-king invaded Arnor in 1409, he should have a cross next to his year of death, like so: ‘Arveleg I † 1409’. The reading without a cross dates to the first printing of The Return of the King.

p. 1039, l. 3: For ‘Stewards of Gondor’ read ‘Stewards of Gondor’.

p. 1041, n. 1 (etc.): Larry Kuenning has pointed out to us that eight footnotes in Appendix A are printed within quotation marks in the first Ballantine Books edition (1965) but not in the current text. In the first edition of The Return of the King, Tolkien stated in a note on the first page of Appendix A: ‘Actual extracts from the longer annals and tales that are found in the Red Book are placed within quotation marks’ (p. 313; cf. The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, p. 682). In the second edition this became: ‘Actual extracts from longer annals and tales are placed within quotation marks. . . . Notes within quotation marks are found in the sources. Others are editorial.’ In the first edition, however, only one note appeared within quotation marks, on p. 323 (n. 1, ‘The sceptre was . . . crowning of Aragorn’). Tolkien corrected this error in his revised text for Ballantine Books, where the following footnotes are enclosed within quotation marks (the Ballantine pagination is cited, with new standard pagination in square brackets):

In addition, quotation marks were added within note 1 on p. 401 (original edition p. 323, new edition p. 1043), after ‘silver fillet’ and before ‘The sceptre of Númenor’, creating an ‘editorial’ comment within a ‘source’ text.

Tolkien’s original copy for emendations in the Appendices was lost after the Ballantine Books edition was produced; the printed Ballantine sheets therefore became the only possible basis for the subsequent revision of the Appendices in the primary (Allen & Unwin, Houghton Mifflin) hardcover editions. The Allen & Unwin typesetters, however, seem to have overlooked the new quotation marks in the notes, or else a comparison was made with the first edition setting and the marks were dropped because they were not present earlier; and in the process, the existing quotation marks around p. 323, n. 1 were removed. Since later editions looked to the standard hardcover text as a guide to resetting, all have omitted the quotation marks Tolkien meant to include. Even the later resetting by Ballantine Books appears to have been made without comparison against that publisher’s original edition.

We have discussed these points with Christopher Tolkien, who informs us that his father marked the corrections indicated above in a copy of the original printing of The Return of the King.

p. 1048, l. 8: For ‘Minardil, son of Eldacar’ read ‘Minardil, great-grandson of Eldacar’.

p. 1058, l. 11: For ‘Elven-home’ read ‘Elvenhome’. In the typescript for the printer, the word was broken between two lines, and the typesetter mistakenly retained the hyphen.

p. 1079: Xu Zhan has pointed out to us that in the family tree of the Dwarves of Erebor the vertical rule between Durin the Deathless and Durin VI should (as a genealogical convention) be dashed, not solid, to indicate multiple generations rather than immediate descent. In the earliest printings of The Return of the King the line was dotted (functionally the equivalent of dashed); by the final printing of the first edition of the volume, the rule must have worn down – being short, it was only two dots to begin with – as it was replaced with a solid rule, and that has remained unnoticed to the present day.

p. 1079: In the text below the genealogical chart, ‘Dáin I slain by a dragon, 2589’ should be followed by a full stop, by analogy with the accompanying lines of text.

p. 1086, l. 5: Here the Tale of Years reads: ‘1409 The Witch-king of Angmar invades Arnor.’ It was suggested to us that ‘Arnor’ should read ‘Arthedain’ because Arnor ‘collapsed in 861’. We have since heard that ‘Arnor’ was replaced by ‘Arthedain’ in the Kindle version of The Lord of the Rings; we replied to the suggestion, however, that ‘Arnor’ is correct: Arnor was divided in 861 into Arthedain, Rhudaur, and Cardolan, but taken all together, this area was still Arnor, and the Witch-king did not invade only Arthedain.

p. 1088, l. 23: For ‘(2861)’ read ‘(2851)’.

p. 1089, ll. 11–14 from bottom: The paragraph beginning ‘Elrond reveals’ should comprise a separate chronological entry, under the date 2952. Andrew Ferguson noticed the odd paragraphing at this point in the Tale of Years, and we confirmed the error by examining the Lord of the Rings papers at Marquette. ‘Elrond reveals . . .’ has begun a new line since the first edition; in the reset edition of 1994, an editor chose to add a paragraph indent. (See further, our analysis in the blog post 'Tolkien Notes 13'.)

p. 1090, ll. 4–6 from bottom: The sentence ‘Elrond sends for Arwen . . . becoming dangerous.’ should comprise a separate entry in the Tale of Years, under the date 3016, as in the first edition. It became conjoined with the entry for 3009 in the Ballantine Books edition of 1965, and thus entered the Allen & Unwin second edition, which used the Ballantine setting for the Appendices as its copy-text, Tolkien’s original revisions for the Appendices having been lost. Christopher Tolkien agrees with us that in all probability, this was an error in the Ballantine text, rather than an amendment by his father, and that it was overlooked as an error when his father worked over the Appendices for Allen & Unwin.

p. 1100, Baggins of Hobbiton family tree: The death date of Bingo Baggins should read ‘1360’. The error ‘1363’ entered in the 1994 edn., from which HarperCollins took the family trees for the anniversary edition, but was correct in the 2002 copy-text we examined. – For ‘Odo | Proudfoot’ read ‘Odo | Proudfoot’, i.e. underline the first name.

p. 1101, Bolger of Budgeford family tree: For ‘Gerda Boffin’ (wife of Adalbert), read ‘= Gerda Boffin’, i.e. include an equals sign to indicate marriage.

p. 1102, Boffin of the Yale family tree [REVISED]: For ‘Lavender Grubb’ (wife of Otto the Fat) read ‘= Lavender Grubb’, i.e. include an equals sign to indicate marriage. For ‘1346’, the year of birth of Griffo Boffin (at lower left), read ‘1344’.

p. 1103, Took of Great Smials family tree: For ‘3 daughters’ (of Adalgrim Took) read ‘3 daughters’, i.e. underline to indicate that they attended Bilbo’s party. The underline was present from the first edition, but (as elsewhere) dropped out due to wear after multiple printings. Also, for ‘[BILBO]’ read ‘[BILBO]’.

p. 1111, note 1: For ‘matters’ read ‘other matters’.

p. 1116, l. 12: For ‘dictated’ read ‘indicated’.

p. 1120, l. 19: For ‘8 =d’ read ‘8=d’, with the space after ‘8’ closed up by analogy with other text in this paragraph.

p. 1120, note 1, l. 3: For ‘occasion.’ read ‘occasion; ŋ is used for ng in sing.’

p. 1121, l. 13 from bottom: For ‘undotted i’ read ‘undotted i’ (with an italic i).

p. 1123, n. 1, l. 3: For ‘hr’ read ‘hr’.

p. 1136, l. 7: For ‘hámfœst’ (with an oe digraph) read ‘hámfæst’ (with an ae digraph).

p. 1137, l. 29: For ‘butterflies to the falcon’ read ‘butterflies to the swift falcon’.

We have been asked which of ‘sword-thain’, as printed (with a hyphen) on p. 777, and ‘swordthain’, as printed (without a hyphen) on pp. 803 and 804, is the correct form. Each is acceptable, but a distinct preference by Tolkien cannot be determined from so small a sampling. The same is true in regard to ‘City of the Kings’ (i.e. Gondor) on p. 973 but ‘city of the Kings’ on p. 1062; and here it may be that Tolkien chose, in the first instance, to capitalize ‘City’ as a means of denoting special import or majesty to the name.

Another question that has been put to us concerns the poem The Road Goes Ever On and On as spoken by Bilbo and Frodo on pp. 35 and 73 respectively. In the first instance, the lines ‘Until it joins some larger way / Where many paths and errands meet’ do not have a comma following ‘way’, but there is a comma after ‘way’ in the second instance. Which is correct? This punctuation has been the same since the first printing of The Fellowship of the Ring, and the manuscripts as presented in The Return of the Shadow offer no help. In the circumstances, we would judge that there is no means of saying that one version or the other is correct and the other is not. Indeed, both may have been intended by Tolkien: Bilbo having set off with ‘eager feet’, it could be argued that the absence of a comma in his verse suggests eagerness, while a comma in Frodo’s verse slows its pace appropriate to his ‘weary feet’.

New index (2005)

p. 1144, col. 1, entry for ‘Baggins, Frodo’: For ‘Daur 593’ read ‘Daur 953’.

p. 1144, col. 2, entry for ‘Barad-dûr’: Add citations: 437, 899.

p. 1148, col. 2, entry for ‘Cirith Ungol’: Delete alternate name ‘Nameless Pass’.

p. 1149, col. 1, entry for ‘Company of the Ring’: In the penultimate line, for ‘872 Nine Walkers’ read ‘872; Nine Walkers’.

p. 1150, col. 1, entry for ‘Desolation of the Morannon’: For ‘1093’ read ‘619, 631, 648, 887, 1093, 1094’.

p. 1152, col. 1, entry for ‘Ecthelion II’: For ‘see also’ read ‘see also’.

p. 1152, col. 1, entry for ‘Eldacar, of Anor’: For ‘Anor’ read ‘Arnor’.

p. 1154, col. 1, entry for ‘Emyn Muil’, sub-entry ‘East Wall of Rohan’: For ‘432’ read ‘423’.

p. 1156, col. 1, entry for ‘First Age’: For ‘1107’ read ‘1108’.

p. 1156, col. 2, entry for ‘Gamgee, Frodo’: For ‘Frodo’ read ‘Frodo (Frodo Gardner)’.

p. 1157, col. 1, add entry: ‘Gamgee, Holfast (Holfast Gardner) 1105’.

p. 1157, col. 2, entry for ‘Gardner, Frodo’: Delete citation, add cross-reference: ‘see Gamgee, Frodo (Frodo Gardner)’.

p. 1157, col. 2, entry for ‘Gardner, Holfast’: Delete citation, add cross-reference: ‘see Gamgee, Holfast (Holfast Gardner)’.

p. 1159, col. 1, entry for ‘Grip’: For ‘Grip’ read ‘Grip (Farmer Maggot’s dog)’ to be consistent with our entries for Fang and Wolf.

p. 1160, add entry: ‘Heathen kings 825, 853’.

p. 1160, col. 2, entry for ‘Hobbits’: For ‘Fallowhides’ read ‘Fallohides’.

p. 1162, col. 2, entry for ‘Limlight’: For ‘881’ read ‘381’, and add reference to p. 1046.

p. 1165, col. 1, entry for ‘Morannon’: Add citation: 882. Add cross-reference: ‘see also Desolation of the Morannon’.

p. 1165, col. 2, entry for ‘Morgul Pass’: For ‘Morgul Pass 885, 900’ read ‘Morgul Pass (Nameless Pass) 710, 885, 900’.

p. 1166, col. 2, cross-reference for ‘Nameless Pass’: For ‘Cirith Ungol’ read ‘Morgul Pass’.

p. 1168, col. 1, entry for ‘Oliphaunt’: The citations should read, in correct order and without repetition, ‘646, 647, 661, 662, 675, 811, 828, 843, 845, 846, 848, 858, 937, 957, 987’.

p. 1170, col. 1, entry for ‘Rhûn, Sea of’: Delete citations for pp. 248, 755.

p. 1171, col. 1, entry for ‘Rúmil’: Replace with two entries:

p. 1177, col. 2, entry for ‘West March’: For ‘of Shire’ read ‘of the Shire’.

p. 1173, col. 2, add entry: ‘Spiders 723; see also Shelob; Ungoliant’.

p. 1175, col. 2, entry for ‘Took, Hildigard’: Add citation: 1103.

p. 1176, col. 1, entry for ‘Towers of the Teeth’: Add citation: 639.

p. 1176, col. 2, entry for ‘Udûn’: For ‘930’ read ‘931’.

In his essay ‘Indexing and Poetry in The Lord of the Rings’ (Lembas Extra 2004, reprinted in Roots and Branches: Selected Papers on Tolkien (2007)), Tom Shippey comments that we group together the three versions of the poem The Road Goes Ever On and On, but divide the two versions of, or excerpts from, Upon the Hearth the Fire Is Red, ‘though they are clearly the same poem, and referred to as such in the text’. His point ‘is not that indexers get things wrong, but that hobbit-poetry does not lend itself to tidy listings’ (Roots and Branches, p. 236). Our point in mentioning this is not to suggest a change, but only to acknowledge Tom’s point, while noting that our groupings are correct according to (varying) first lines.

We would like to thank the Departamento de Traduccion Irreverente, Merlin DeTardo, Timothy Fisher, Carl Hostetter, Yuval Kfir, Larry Kuenning, Kwon Kuhoon, Je Yun Lee, Javier Lorenzo, Erik Mueller-Harder, Charles Noad, Zoran Pajic, Calvin Rice, Silverwolfwushu, Pekka Tuomisto, and Xu Zhan for calling some of these errors to our attention.