When J.R.R. Tolkien Laid Aside the Silmarillion in 1937 the Extension of the Original 'Mythology' Into Later Ages of the W
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file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R%20-%20The...20of%20Middle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/CONTENTS.TXT When J.R.R. Tolkien laid aside The Silmarillion in 1937 the extension of the original 'mythology' into later Ages of the world had scarcely emerged, if it had emerged at all; as he himself recorded, he knew nothing of the peoples and history of these Ages until he 'met them on the way': 'The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears until I came there. Fangorn Forest was an unforeseen adventure. I had never heard of the House of Eorl nor of the Stewards of Gondor. Saruman had never been revealed to me.' It was in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings that there emerged a comprehensive historical structure and chronology of the Second and Third Ages, embracing all the diverse strands that came together in the War of the Ring. The difficulty bordering on despair that he found in providing these Appendices, leading to delay in the publication of The Return of the King, is well known; but in The Peoples of Middle-earth Christopher Tolkien shows that the work had in fact been achieved years before, in essays and records differing greatly from the published forms. In these early texts is seen the evolution of the chronology of the later Ages, the Calendars, the Hobbit genealogies (with those of families that were printed but not published), and the Westron language or Common Speech (from which many words and names are recorded that were afterwards lost). Following the account of the Appendices a number of other writings by J.R.R. Tolkien are included in this book, chiefly deriving from his last years, when new insights and new constructions still freely arose as he pondered the history that he had created. This final volume of The History of Middle-earth concludes with two soon-abandoned stories, both unique in the setting of time or place: The New Shadow in Gondor of the Fourth Age, and the tale of Tal-elmar, in which the coming of the dreaded Numenorean ships is seen through the eyes of men of Middle-earth in the Dark Years. J.R.R. TOLKIEN. file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R...dle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/CONTENTS.TXT (1 of 3)14-7-2004 22:51:11 file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R%20-%20The...20of%20Middle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/CONTENTS.TXT THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. Harper CollinsPablishers. To Baillie Tolkien. CONTENTS. Foreword. page vii. PART ONE. THE PROLOGUE AND APPENDICES TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I. The Prologue. 3. II. The Appendix on Languages. 19. III. The Family Trees. 85. IV. The Calendars. 119. V. The History of the Akallabeth. 140. VI. The Tale of Years of the Second Age. 166. VII. The Heirs of Elendil. 188. VIII. The Tale of Years of the Third Age. 225. IX. The Making of Appendix A. (i) The Realms in Exile. 253. (ii) The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. 262. (iii) The House of Eorl. 270. (iv) Durin's Folk. 274. PART TWO. LATE WRITINGS. X. Of Dwarves and Men. 295. XI. The Shibboleth of Feanor. 331. XII. The Problem of Ros. 367. XIH. Last Writings. 377. file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R...dle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/CONTENTS.TXT (2 of 3)14-7-2004 22:51:11 file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R%20-%20The...20of%20Middle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/CONTENTS.TXT PART THREE. TEACHINGS OF PENGOLOD. XIV. Dangweth Pengolod. 395. XV. Of Lembas. 403. PART FOUR. UNFINISHED TALES. XVI. The New Shadow. 409. XVII. Tal-Elmar. 422. Index. 439. file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R...dle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/CONTENTS.TXT (3 of 3)14-7-2004 22:51:11 file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R%20-%20The...20of%20Middle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/FOREWORD.TXT FOREWORD. In my Foreword to Sauron Defeated I wrote that I would not attempt a study of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings 'at this time'. That was an ambiguous remark, for I rather doubted that I would ever make the attempt; but I justified its postpone- ment, at least, on the ground that 'my father soon turned again, when The Lord of the Rings was finished, to the myths and legends of the Elder Days', and so devoted the following volumes to the later history of 'The Silmarillion'. My intentions for the twelfth book were uncertain; but after the publication of The War of the Jewels I came to think that since (contrary to my original conception) I had included in The History of Middle- earth a lengthy account of the writing of The Lord of the Rings it would be a strange omission to say nothing whatever of the Appendices, in which the historical structure of the Second and Third Ages, based on a firm chronology, actually emerged. Thus I embarked on the study of the history of these works, of which I had little precise knowledge. As with the narrative texts of The Lord of the Rings, those of the Appendices (and of the Prologue) became divided, in some cases in a bewildering fashion, at the time of the sale of the papers to Marquette University; but I received most generous help, prompt and meticulous, from Charles Elston, the Archivist of the Memorial Library at Marquette, which enabled me to determine the textual relations. It was only now that I came to understand that texts of supplementary essays to The Lord of the Rings had reached a remarkably finished form, though in many respects far different from the published Appendices, at a much earlier date than I had supposed: in the period (as I judge) immediately following my father's writing of the last chapter of The Lord of the Rings in 1948. There is indeed a total absence in these texts of indications of external date; but it can be seen from many points that when they were written the narrative was not yet in final form, and equally clearly that they in fact preceded my father's return to the First Age at the beginning of the 1950s, as described in the Foreword to The War of the Jewels. A major upheaval in the historical-linguistic structure was still to come: the abandonment of their own tongue by the Noldor returning out of the West and their adoption of the Sindarin of Middle- earth. file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R...dle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/FOREWORD.TXT (1 of 7)14-7-2004 22:51:49 file:///K|/rah/J.R.R.%20Tolkien/Tolkien,%20J%20R%20R%20-%20The...20of%20Middle%20Earth%20Series%2012%20(txt)/vol12/FOREWORD.TXT In my account I have of course concentrated on these early forms, which belong so evidently, in manner and air, with the narrative itself. I have little doubt that my father had long con- templated such a supplement and accompaniment to The Lord of the Rings, regarding it as an essential element in the whole; and I have found it impossible to show in any satisfactory way how he conceived it at that time without setting out the early texts in full, although this naturally entails the recital, especially in the case of the history of Arnor and Gondor, of much that is known from its survival in the published versions of the Appen- dices. I have excluded the Appendix E ('Writing and Spelling'), but I have included the Prologue; and I have introduced into this part of the book an account of the origin and development of the Akallabeth, since the evolution of the chronological structure of the Second Age was closely related to my father's original formalised computation of the dates of the Numenor- ean kings. Following this part I have given three essays written during his last years; and also some brief writings that appear to derive from the last years of his life, primarily concerned with or arising from the question whether Glorfindel of Rivendell and Glorfindel of Gondolin were one and the same. These late writ- ings are notable for the many wholly new elements that entered the 'legendarium'; and also for the number of departures from earlier work on the Matter of the Elder Days. It may be sug- gested that whereas my father set great store by consistency at all points with The Lord of the Rings and the Appendices, so little concerning the First Age had appeared in print that he was under far less constraint. I am inclined to think, however, that the primary explanation of these differences lies rather in his writing largely from memory. The histories of the First Age would always remain in a somewhat fluid state so long as they were not fixed in published work; and he certainly did not have all the relevant manuscripts clearly arranged and set out before him. But it remains in any case an open question, whether (to give a single example) in the essay Of Dwarves and Men he had definitively rejected the greatly elaborated account of the houses of the Edain that had entered the Quenta Silmarillion in about 1958, or whether it had passed from his mind.