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

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СКАЧАТЬ a special study of the (West Midlands) language of that manuscript, and of a related manuscript in the Bodleian Library. He does not feel that he is solely responsible for the delay in completing the Clarendon Chaucer; he complains that all of the work done so far on the book has been done by him. George S. Gordon has not returned draft notes Tolkien sent him two years earlier, and Tolkien will do no more unless he is given some help in the difficult task of selecting notes and reducing them to the limits Sisam requires.

      25 November 1930 Kenneth Sisam replies to Tolkien, approving his decision to try to finish the Clarendon Chaucer.

      28 November 1930 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes to his children in reply to their letters. The North Polar Bear has had whooping cough.

      5 December 1930 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. – He also attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The report (dated 28 November) of the committee (including Tolkien) appointed to consider the question of Readers’ and Lecturers’ emoluments is presented.

      6 December 1930 Michaelmas Full Term ends.

      Christmas 1930 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes to his children. His letter, dated 23–24 December, tells how the North Polar Bear came to have whooping cough after being lost in a snowstorm. An enclosed picture shows Father Christmas finding Polar Bear in the snow, and Polar Bear sitting with his feet in mustard and hot water; the party to celebrate Polar Bear’s recovery; and Snow Boys and Polar Cubs pulling a giant Christmas cracker. – If Tolkien conceived The Hobbit in summer 1930, he possibly now begins to tell the story to his children.

      28 December 1930 George S. Gordon writes to Tolkien, returning his notes for the Clarendon Chaucer, praising them and commenting on various points.

1931

      Early 1930s from ?1931 Tolkien writes various undated texts closely associated with but later than the Quenta Noldorinwa and the first version of the ‘earliest’ Annals of Beleriand. These are the ‘earliest’ Annals of Valinor, a chronological record of events during 3000 Valian Years (30,000 of our years) from the time the Valar entered the World until the return of the Elves to Middle-earth and the rising of the Sun and the Moon; two texts of the same work in Old English; and a second version of the ‘earliest’ Annals of Beleriand, virtually a new work but unfinished.

      ?1931–Trinity Term 1933 The members of Edward Tangye Lean’s ‘Inklings’ society, including Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, meet to read aloud unpublished compositions and receive criticism. Among those works is an early version of *Errantry. Tolkien will later write that the group ‘met in T.-L.’s rooms in University College…. If the club thought fit a [composition] might be voted to be worthy of entry in a Record Book. (I was the scribe and keeper of the book)’ (letter to William Luther White, 11 September 1967, Letters, pp. 387–8). See note. – Using the verso of an early manuscript of Errantry, Tolkien works on a version of his verse drama *The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son.

      ?1931 Tolkien writes several manuscripts in an invented Elvish script (*Writing systems). Among these are versions of his poems Errantry and *The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (Pictures no. 48), both apparently composed around this time.

      18 January 1931 Hilary Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures and classes for this term are: Old English Minor Poems (continued): Judith, Riddles, and The Battle of Brunanburh on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 20 January; the Old English Exodus on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 20 January; Gothic Traditions, Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 22 January; Carmina Scaldica: Introduction to Reading of Scaldic Poetry, at an hour and place to be arranged; and Old English Textual Criticism, at an hour and place to be arranged.

      22 January 1931 Tolkien writes to Kenneth Sisam. He has done as much work as possible on the Clarendon Chaucer despite a ‘shattered vac[ation]’ (Oxford University Press archives), and Pass Moderations and external examining at four universities will now leave him no leisure before August. He asks for guidance on the permitted length of the book and the audience at which it is aimed, to avoid wasted labour. He has been unable to do any research, though ‘obscurities and unsatisfactory explanations’ remain. Further work on the Chaucer will have to be extracted from time normally given to sleep or study, but Tolkien vows to complete the book before the summer if physically possible. Then he will think about an edition of the Ancrene Riwle on the lines that Sisam has indicated.

      30 January 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

      6 February 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He is appointed to a committee on proposed new regulations for the Honour School. The Applications Committee has readmitted L.E. Jones of Lady Margaret Hall as a B.Litt. student, with Tolkien as her supervisor.

      12 February 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. The Committee will now have two meetings per term, to be held on the second and seventh Thursdays.

      13 February 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

      24 February 1931 Tolkien and thirteen others sign a letter to the General Board, requesting that the Chair of Comparative Philology be raised from Grade B to Grade A.

      25 February 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

      26 February 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. The Committee discuss what might be read only in the Library and what might be borrowed. Tolkien raises the question of making the bulk of the Napier Collection (the Library’s Old and Middle English holdings, based on the personal library of A.S. Napier) open to circulation.

      27 February 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.

      6 March 1931 Tolkien attends the sixtieth anniversary dinner of the Johnson Society of Pembroke College. He and the Society’s Secretary, E.V.E. White, give the toast to ‘The College’.

      13 March 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. – He also attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The Faculty Board regrets the refusal of the General Board to provide for another Reader in English Literature. David Nichol Smith and Tolkien undertake to prepare for the next meeting of the Board a draft reply on the needs of the faculty. – Tolkien also attends a Pembroke College meeting.

      14 March 1931 Hilary Full Term ends.

      16 March 1931 First Public Examination (Pass Moderations) begins. Tolkien is an examiner.

      April 1931 The Tolkien family take a holiday in Milford-on-Sea, the home of Michael Tolkien’s godfather, Father Augustin Emery, formerly parish priest at Great Haywood. John Tolkien will remember walking with his father along the shingle spit to Hurst Castle where Charles I had been imprisoned, a fort jutting out into the Solent (conversation with the authors).

      7 April 1931 Kenneth Sisam writes to Tolkien, explaining that the Clarendon Chaucer should have fewer notes than an ordinary school edition, as it is not to be for beginners, and that the notes should be concerned only with major difficulties.

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