Re: The General Tolkien News Thread

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ For me its not that I see it all as hugely colourful and lurid or anything, but if you take a look at that cover of the sinking of Numenor, in all my imaginings of Numenoreon cities I'd not have pictured every single building in them as being a uniform dull, washed out battleship grey. }}

[Forest Shepherd]

TO BE FAIR, Numenor is not exactly a cheery place when it falls into the sea.

Should there be buildings in Numenor constructed in a similar fashion to Orthanc?

[malickfan]

Something for our American forum members to check out:

https://eu.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/arts/2022/08/22/marquette-university-exhibit-shows-creation-jrr-tolkiens-lord-rings/7841566001/

If it's anything like the Maker of Middle-Earth exhibition from a few years ago it will be well worth checking out (I wasn't able to visit the Maker Of Middle-Earth exhibition itself, but did buy the tie in book of the same which is a fascinating and lengthy read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien:_Maker_of_Middle-earth

[malickfan]

https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2022/07/05/113503-lost-tolkien-manuscript-found-concerning-the-hoard/

See this thread on the Barrowdowns forum for more info:

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=19607

[malickfan]

A previously unseen text by Tolkien is to be released next year:

https://www.tolkienguide.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4292&start=0

http://kalimac.blogspot.com/2021/11/tolkien-studies-supplement-announcement.html

The editor of this text commented further on this thread:


http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=19520

Now that it's officially public, I can talk about what's in it in a bit more detail. This is the third and last of the 'synoptic' time-schemes Tolkien made, in other words using parallel columns to keep track of his various groups of characters. They wind up looking something like calendar pages, grids of boxes. This version, which I have dubbed S3, postdates the completion of the story. That fact I think is important in understanding its nature- it's not a 'working' document, in which we can see him developing his ideas as with the drafts in HME, but more in the nature of a 'reference' document like the Appendices, of which impulse it really was a part, although it was not I believe intended for publication but rather as groundwork for published material.

The first two pages (one leaf), written on 13-inch lined paper in the normal manner, are a linear time-scheme of the story from Hobbiton to the entry into Lorien. The next six (three leaves) use the same paper but are oriented landscape-fashion and divided into columns for the dramatis personae (these change constantly as needed), with a row for each date, January 15 through March 7. The next page, the ninth, followed suit; but it dissolved into a welter of alterations, strikethroughs, insertions, directional arrows and ultimately became such a chaotic mess that Tolkien discarded it (it was found separately in the archives) and replaced it. From this point he used blank pages from exam booklets, his usual medium for drafting. As so often, what had started as a "final" copy had become mere rough work. (It's also possible though that he simply ran out of the other paper!). The new pages 9-11 continue the multicolumn time-scheme through the fall of Sauron on March 25. The verso of 11 was left blank (for now), and 12-14 return to portrait linear mode, there being no need for multiple columns, until Sam's return to Bag End on 6 October 1421. At some time, I am inclined to think much later in around 1954 while working on 'The Great Years,' Tolkien jotted some Appendix B-style entries on the back of p.11, all concerned with global events after the fall of the Dark Tower.

There then follow far more than 15 pages of my own blathering about the above, and an ungodly number of footnotes. The blathering actually covers much more than just this document, because I found myself for better or worse describing the development of all three 'synoptic' chronologies, and their interrelationship to the development of the narrative itself. This applies even to S3: although the story was 'finished,' making S3 caused Tolkien to completely overhaul the week leading up to the Pelennor, and accordingly rewrite all the many, many threads converging on Minas Tirith.

And then there's the matter of converting his calendar post facto from our modern calendar to Shire Reckoning.......

Not a major release like The Nature Of Middle-earth (the editor has elsewhere estimated it will run to roughly 70 pages in length, including his notes/commentary etc) but it does sound interesting, IIRC Hammond and Scull quoted/reference these writings in their book The Lord Of The Rings: A Readers Companion.

I don't subscribe to Tolkien Studies but this was published last month if anyone is interested in chasing it up https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Chronology_of_The_Lord_of_the_Rings

The editor of the text has (is still?) doing a reddit Q and A here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/wwl40m/tolkiens_chronology_of_the_lord_of_the_rings_ask/

There's a interesting comment at the top:

Well, "the Estate" has naturally changed, dramatically, in the last couple of years. Up through 2019, for the purposes of publishing anything "the Estate" meant Christopher: everything was his call. Since then I think they are sort of feeling their way; no successor as Literary Executor was appointed, and the ball has dropped into the court of the Estate's longtime lawyer, Cathleen Blackburn (officially the Estate is now managed by committee, but CB handles the day-to-day).

My paper was the first publication proposal to come through - or at least be taken seriously - after CT's death. (Believe it or not I submitted it almost two years ago- that's how long it can take to turn a manuscript into print). Carl H's NoME had been greenlit by CRT before he died.

So in my case, at least Cathleen elected to submit it to a sort of informal peer review by Tolkien scholars, basically so that they could tell her whether it was worth a damn or not. I don't know if this will be the procedure followed going forward, but if it is then it will probably be the case that publication decisions will boil down to what a rather amorphous community of Tolkien Scholars thinks is any good. (of course, there are some papers, mostly of a more personal nature like JRRT's diaries, which the family still hold and ain't likely to be published for the foreseeable future).

As stated elsewhere in that thread Wayne G Hammond and Christina Scull have indicated several times they'd like to edit an expanded edition of Tolkien's Letters (IIRC over 1,500 letters exisit most of which remain unpublished), I also recall reading that the author of https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Tolkien%27s_Lost_Chaucer may actually be editing Tolkien's manuscript for publication?

Makes me wonder whose idea the forthcoming The Fall Of Numenor book was? A personal request by Christopher Tolkien, or something dreamt up by Tolkien's publsihers?

[halfwise]

Quite a data download.   I suppose the state of Wisconsin is closer than Great Britain, but given the choice I'd go to Great Britain.  Madison is a fabulous city....surrounded by corn fields and cows for as far as you can imagine.

Milwaukee (where Marquette University is) just has the cows and the corn.

EDIT: I felt I might be unfairly maligning Milwaukee, so I looked up reasons to visit it. One reason given is "It’s also the home of celebrities such as Rachel Broshnahan and Jessica Szohr."

Um, okay. Who?

[Forest Shepherd]

Aren't the Red Letter Media guys around there?

Not exactly a selling point either.

[halfwise]

I'd call them celebrities. Not like you'd go visiting their homes on a tour, but it would be funny to pap them at a restaurant.

[Forest Shepherd]

Walking down the street in Milwaukee.
Suddenly, an unholy screeching cackle of a laugh erupts from behind you.

I'd like to avoid Rich Evans at all costs anyway.

[malickfan]

Another new book will be published next year:

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2022/12/new-tolkien-book-the-battle-of-maldon-to-be-published/

The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth has been published before in various compilation books (I have a copy of Tree And Leaf so have read and enjoyed the poem already:

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Homecoming_of_Beorhtnoth

But the Battle of Maldon and the related essay are completely new to me (as far as I can recall I don't think even Hammond and Scull's JRR Tolkien Companion And Guide mention them) so very intrigued to read this, there's a huge amount of Tolkien's Academic writings/essays/poems that remain unpublished and I'm glad that side of Tolkien's writing is now getting more exposure, if this is anything like The Fall of Arthur or the Beowulf volume it will be worth reading.

Makes me wonder A) Why Christopher Tolkien never published this himself and b) what else is locked away in Tolkien's archives...

[Pettytyrant101]

Makes me wonder A) Why Christopher Tolkien never published this himself - Malick

{{ If I had to hazard a guess I'd suspect Christopher was quite strict on what he thought was in a fit state for publication and what he thought his father would be happy to have published. The current family members heading up the Tolkien Estate I get the feeling would happily dig his bones up for sale if you offered them a big enough bag of gold. }}

[malickfan]

Makes me wonder A) Why Christopher Tolkien never published this himself - Malick

{{ If I had to hazard a guess I'd suspect Christopher was quite strict on what he thought was in a fit state for publication and what he thought his father would be happy to have published. The current family members heading up the Tolkien Estate I get the feeling would happily dig his bones up for sale if you offered them a big enough bag of gold.    }}

I'm not so sure in this case that's entirely fair, it's likely this book has been in the works for several years and if you look at some of the other posthumous publications like ((The Story of Kullervo, The lay of Aoutrou and Itorun edited by Verlyn Flieger) or The History of The Hobbit by John Rateliffe these were texts worth publishing that Christopher let others edit for publication(in the latter case Rateliffe had been asked by Christopher Tolkien personally to write the book and spent nearly 20 years working on the project before it was published).

The Fall Of Numenor just repackaged already existing writings so strikes me as more of a cash in than something like this, if anything I think Simon Tolkien etc have less emotional attachment to the writings so may be less controlling on what gets published.

Maybe we can finally get an expanded edition of The Letters Of JRR Tolkien...

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ This popped up on my facebook and I thought was rather good, its a map of Wales in the style of Tolkiens maps- }}

[Forest Shepherd]

A popular theme for maps! I have a map of California done in a similar style hanging up in my cabin.

[malickfan]

New 'Revised and Expanded' edition of The Letters of JRR Tolkien will be released later this year:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0008628769?tag=tolkcollsguid-21&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world’s greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.

J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of the languages and history of Middle-earth as recorded in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, was one of the most prolific letter-writers of this century. Over the years he wrote a mass of letters – to his publishers, to members of his family, to friends, and to 'fans' of his books – which often reveal the inner workings of his mind, and which record the history of composition of his works and his reaction to subsequent events.

A selection from Tolkien's correspondence, collected and edited by Tolkien's official biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, and assisted by Christopher Tolkien, was published in 1981. It presented, in Tolkien's own words, a highly detailed portrait of the man in his many aspects: storyteller, scholar, Catholic, parent, friend, and observer of the world around him.

In this revised and expanded edition of The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, it has been possible to go back to the editors’ original typescripts and notes, restoring more than 150 letters that were excised purely to achieve what was then deemed a ‘publishable length’, and present the book as originally intended.

Enthusiasts for his writings will find much that is new, for the letters not only include fresh information about Middle-earth, such as Tolkien’s own plot summary of the entirety of The Lord of the Rings and a vision for publishing his ‘Tales of the Three Ages’, but also many insights into the man and his world. In addition, this new selection will entertain anyone who appreciates the art of letter-writing, of which J.R.R. Tolkien was a master.

I have the original edition and many of Tolkiens letters are fascinating, he was equally thoughtful and verbose in his correspondence as he was writing his stories, so I'm sure this will be interesting reading.

...Though it sounds like they are merely restoring letters from the narrow selection Christopher Tolkien/Carpenter had chosen (probably cut for lack of space space in the original edition) rather than publishing letters from other sources and archives...if those letters were cut in the original release (a release that was aimed at a more general audience) why are they being republished now?

Wayne Hammond/Christina Scull noted in their Companion and Guide that as of 2006 there were upwards of 1,500 letters by Tolkien known to exist (many in private collections or archives) withmore coming to light each year, so even this new edition will only publish a selection. Hammond and Scull (amongst others) have quoted from numerous unpublished Letters over the years (and had in the past expressed interest in editing a new edition of The Letters themselves) so I'm wondering just how many of these new Letters will be truly new to readers? There's many intresting Letters that delve into Tolkien's character and life that wouldn't appeal to more casual readers.

Tolkien’s own plot summary of the entirety of The Lord of the Rings

Seems to refer to this https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_to_Milton_Waldman so I wouldn't really count that as unpublished.

In comparison IIRC The Collected letters of CS Lewis runs to 3 volumes and published over 3,000 Letters many of which were entirely unknown to readers.

It's somewhat surprising to see this happen i.m.o, the original edition was in 1980(?) I think and was supposedly a poor seller, having been reprinted only a few times, curious to note A) it seems there's no deluxe edition of this book listed for sale (when even rather slim Tolkien books like TheI Story Of Kullervo and the recent The Battle Of Maldon had deluxe hardback releases) and B) No new editor is listed? Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien both passed some years ago so I don't think we can expect much in the way of editorial commentary.

Although I will probably buy a copy (my paperback of the original edition is rather worn) I can't help but feel this is more of a cash grab than the genuinely exciting release it could have been.

[halfwise]

Good to see you again, Malick!

I have a pdf of the letters of Tolkien, but it would be nice to have the fuller edition, perhaps with editorial notes?

[Pettytyrant101]

{{{ I have the original, its the perfect keep in the toilet book Lots of letters that are interestng and all different lengths to cater for however long nature keeps you there, from short to long, a quick drop off or a strained long haul stay its got you covered }}

[malickfan]

New book from Wayne G Hammond and Christina Scull, 'The collected Poems Of JRR Tolkien':

https://wayneandchristina.wordpress.com/2024/03/12/tolkiens-collected-poems/

HarperCollins having announced today that The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien will be published this September, we’re able to speak publicly about our next book for the first time since an edition of Tolkien’s verse was suggested to us in HarperCollins’ offices in April 2016. The Tolkien Estate were eager to bring more of Tolkien’s unpublished poems into print, and Christopher Tolkien hoped that his father’s talent for poetry could become more widely known. We were sympathetic to both aims, and no strangers to Tolkien’s poems through our earlier work.

Our immediate task was to review scans of poems and suggest to Christopher the best way to present them. It took months to organize and read these, more than a thousand pages of varying difficulty, from almost illegible draft manuscripts in soft pencil to professional typescripts. And at the same time, we were obliged to work on a new edition of our J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, which had been commissioned at that same April 2016 meeting; this occupied us until June the following year.

In the beginning, Christopher had no thought of publishing his father’s entire vast, complex poetic opus. Instead, he focused on what he called the ‘early poems’, which we interpreted as those composed mostly before the 1930s. Many of those were, indeed, not yet published, some not even recorded in our Chronology. But we saw that there were also unpublished poems of note from later decades, as well as some which had been published but were now hard to find, and we knew that not a little of Tolkien’s earlier poetry had evolved into later verse, for example in his 1962 Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Surely, no one can appreciate Tolkien as a poet fully without considering all of these works together.

Discussions with Christopher about the book occurred at intervals; he himself was busy, preparing The Fall of Gondolin. At length, we proposed that it would be a lost opportunity not to collect as many of his father’s poems as possible, regardless of their date of composition, language, or circumstance, and to model such a collection after Christopher’s History of Middle-earth, combining original texts with editorial notes and commentary. For Tolkien’s longer poems already published as separate books, such as The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún and The Fall of Arthur, or in composite works such as The Lays of Beleriand, we suggested that brief, representative extracts be included, in order to show in full Tolkien’s development as a poet and verse forms he did not use elsewhere; and in the same way, we would draw also from his translations of Old and Middle English poems, such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In March 2019, in what would be the final message he sent to us, Christopher approved our concept and trial entries.

After Christopher’s death in January 2020, we needed to make our proposal to the Tolkien Estate trustees (Christopher had retired as a trustee in 2017, but remained his father’s literary executor), and to HarperCollins. This was complicated by the Covid-19 pandemic, but in the end all was agreed, and we were formally commissioned as editors. We completed a draft text in June 2023 (while also preparing the index to the new edition of Tolkien’s Letters). Since then, we have been revising, with advice from Chris Smith at HarperCollins, and have also incorporated poetry by Tolkien found at the eleventh hour in the archive of the C.S. Lewis scholar Walter Hooper.

A number of factors, namely economies of production, ruled out a Complete Poems by Tolkien. Nevertheless, the Collected Poems will include most of the verses Tolkien is known to have written, and for most of these, multiple versions which show their evolution. There are at least 240 discrete poems, depending on how one distinguishes titles and versions, presented in 195 entries and five appendices. When possible, we have used manuscripts and typescripts in the Bodleian Library, at Marquette University, and at the University of Leeds. We have chosen not to include all of the one hundred or so poems contained in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but have made a representative selection – surely, no one who reads the Collected Poems will not already have at least one copy of Tolkien’s two most popular works. His longer poems, as we have said, will be presented as excerpts. The book will also include a long introduction to Tolkien as a poet, a brief chronology of his poetry, and a glossary of archaic, unusual, or unfamiliar words he used in his verse.

HarperCollins have announced the Collected Poems as a three-volume boxed set. The Amazon UK description gives its extent as 1,368 pages, which is close to the number in our typescript; in fact, the printed text will run to more than 1,600 pages. There are currently no plans for a de luxe edition, but we’re aiming for an elegant trade release. We have not yet heard about a U.S. edition.

I've been hoping for a book like this for years and they couldn't have chosen a better team to edit it, 1600 pages!!!

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ Of all the recent Tolkien books to have been released, this is the first one I'd really like to own. Mind you will need to wait till some sort of normality has returned to the economy or I'll have to sell a kidney, I'd sell a liver but I fear mine are beyond the point of any second-hand usage! }}