The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ his working life. And then, after the publication of The Hobbit and especially The Lord of the Rings, he received thousands of letters expressing appreciation, asking questions, or requesting his autograph. His publishers too were in frequent touch with him about various literary, financial, and legal matters. And all of this was in addition to letters he wrote to and received from his family and intimate friends.

      Tolkien’s correspondence with his publisher George Allen & Unwin in particular has been of immense value to us. In many of his letters he writes of personal activities, of academic pressures, and of his or his family’s health, as well as about business at hand. These documents, however, became less frequent in his later years, reflecting increased face to face contact with publisher’s staff and use of the telephone.

      Perhaps our greatest difficulty in writing the Chronology has been to decide where to place events which cannot be firmly dated, such as the emergence of the Inklings. Many of Tolkien’s works, moreover, can be placed only within a range of years, and only roughly in order of writing. In doing so, we have relied on internal as well as external evidence – on handwriting, paper, and typefaces, and on the state of development of the work in question. Where Christopher Tolkien as a result of his own extensive research into the history of his father’s writings has been able to group works in a sequential order, we have placed the grouping at the start of the relevant time span, rather than insert the writings in question arbitrarily into the Chronology. We have also made use of dates of composition inscribed by Tolkien on his writings and art, keeping in mind that some of these were added after the fact, sometimes many years later, and that memory can err; but statements by the creator of a work can hold significant weight. In a few instances there is conflicting evidence for dates, most notably for the origin and writing of The Hobbit, and in such cases we have made multiple entries in the Chronology, with cross-references, and have discussed the matter at greater length in the second part of the Companion and Guide.

      That part, which we have called the Reader’s Guide, comprises in the course of two volumes a ‘What’s What’, a ‘Where’s Where’, and a ‘Who’s Who’ of Tolkien, arranged in alphabetical order and in a single sequence. It includes, as appropriate, articles or brief entries on:

      ¶ Tolkien’s academic writings and his works of poetry and prose fiction, with summaries, concise backgrounds or histories, brief surveys of reviews and criticism (in so far as these exist), and miscellaneous commentary. Separate articles are provided for published works; unpublished works are noted as appropriate in topical articles, or in articles on other, related works. We have written separate articles for those of Tolkien’s poems that are published in whole or in large part (i.e. more than a few lines), and are not integral with a larger literary work, e.g. the poems of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, but have omitted separate entry for clerihews and for all but one of the songs (The Root of the Boot, under The Stone Troll) contributed by Tolkien to Songs for the Philologists. Also omitted are entries for letters sent by Tolkien to newspapers or journals.

      ¶ Key ideas in Tolkien’s writings, such as eucatastrophe and sub-creation, and general topics such as his religion, his views towards women, his invented languages and writing systems, his reading, and disputes over the American copyright of The Lord of the Rings.

      ¶ Places that Tolkien lived, worked, or visited, the colleges and universities with which he was associated, pubs and bookshops he frequented, and so forth. It should be assumed by the reader that the places named in this book are in England unless otherwise stated, that English counties are referred to generally according to the names and boundaries that existed in Tolkien’s lifetime (before the reorganization of local governments in the later twentieth century), and that while coverage is full, it is not exhaustive: we have not attempted to list every place in which Tolkien set foot. Nor have we attempted to account for every claim by towns and regions (in Britain and elsewhere) to Tolkien’s presence, or as an inspiration for The Lord of the Rings, put forth with the rise in his popularity: some of these are exaggerated, others dubious at best. In all cases we have preferred to rely on documentary evidence such as letters, guest books, and diaries, rather than on assumptions and reported ‘tradition’. It should be noted also that while some of the places described in this book are open to the public, others are not. Readers therefore who wish to follow in Tolkien’s footsteps should take care not to trespass on private property, including college grounds when not open to visitors.

      ¶ Members of Tolkien’s family; friends and colleagues, especially in Birmingham and at Leeds and Oxford; fellow members of the Inklings and other groups or societies to which he belonged; publishers and editors; notable teachers and students; and major correspondents. Here too, our coverage is selective. Tolkien had many friends and acquaintances, some of whom figured mainly, or wholly, in his private life, and do not appear in published letters or biographies. Our aim has been to give an individual entry to anyone whom we know to have been particularly significant in Tolkien’s life or to the production of his works, or for whom a biographical note gives us the opportunity to describe, more fully than in the Chronology, an important or particularly interesting aspect of Tolkien or his writings. Other persons with whom Tolkien was concerned are mentioned in passing, in various contexts in the Companion and Guide: references to these may be found in the comprehensive index at the end of each volume.

      In the Reader’s Guide also, appended to the second volume, are genealogical charts (family trees) of the Tolkien and Suffield families; a bibliographical list of Tolkien’s published writings; a list of his published paintings, drawings, doodles, and maps; a list of his poems, published and unpublished, by title and first line; and a list of his works with the languages into which they have been translated. In addition, we have provided (in the Reader’s Guide only, also in the second volume) a bibliography of the various resources and archives we have used in the writing of the Companion and Guide. A comprehensive index to all three volumes appears both in the Chronology and the second volume of the Reader’s Guide.

      A few general notes are in order. J.R.R. Tolkien is sometimes referred to in this book as ‘Ronald’, to distinguish him from other Tolkiens or when reference by his surname seemed inappropriate in construction, and also generally for the young Tolkien, before he went up to Oxford in 1911.

      In the Reader’s Guide all entries for persons whose surname begins ‘Mc’ or ‘Mac’ are alphabetized as if the name begins with ‘Mac’; thus the article for R.B. McCallum appears before that for Gervase Mathew. Although articles in the Reader’s Guide are generally alphabetized in the usual fashion, we have made an exception for those concerned with the Tolkien family in general, its members in particular, and the Tolkien Estate which is a family enterprise: these are presented in this order, intellectual rather than mechanical.

      Titles of works are given as found, except that we have regularized the capitalization of hyphenated titles where variation occurs in practice, e.g. On Fairy-Stories, The Sea-Bell. Titles of discrete works given them by Tolkien, including poems, essays, and the individual tales of The Book of Lost Tales, are italicized following Christopher Tolkien’s example in The History of Middle-earth, while titles of chapters or other subsections of text, and titles assigned to Tolkien’s works by others (such as ‘The Ambidexters Sentence’), for the most part are expressed in quotation marks. Excepted are a few titles assigned by Christopher Tolkien which he himself chose to italicize, such as Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin in Unfinished Tales, rather than its author’s choice, Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin (there is a distinct entry for this title, in quotation marks, as that of the twenty-third chapter of The Silmarillion), and Gnomish Lexicon rather than the unwieldy I·Lam na·Ngoldathon. But it is to be understood that ‘The Silmarillion’, so expressed, refers to Tolkien’s mythology in general, and The Silmarillion, so italicized, generally to the book edited by Christopher Tolkien and first published in 1977, except in a few instances (understood in context) to the book that Tolkien wished СКАЧАТЬ