The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 2: Reader’s Guide PART 1. Christina Scull

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СКАЧАТЬ arthritis had begun to make it hard for him to type or to use a pen. In May 1957 Burchfield became concerned that several of the EETS editions of Ancrene Riwle were delayed, not only Tolkien’s, and suggested that deadlines be imposed. On 31 March 1958, at a meeting which Tolkien did not attend, the EETS Committee voted to require him to deliver his book by the end of the following June, or the Society would issue a straightforward facsimile of MS CCCC 402 rather than his transcription. Spurred by this decision, Tolkien devoted more concentrated attention to the task, in particular during the month of August 1958. Even so, he did not deliver a typescript to EETS until September of that year.

      When acknowledging receipt of the book R.W. Burchfield now unfortunately took the opportunity to express his personal view, which he suggested would be held also by other officials in EETS, that Tolkien’s edition should be printed in the same style as the other editions of Ancrene Riwle already issued by the Society, not in a line by line transcription. He carefully laid out his reasons, which had much to do with consistency and aesthetics, but apparently was unaware of the heated debate that had occurred long before he had become Secretary, or that it had been agreed twenty years earlier that Tolkien’s edition, at least, should appear as its editor wished.

      Tolkien replied to Burchfield at once and at length, evidently in more than one letter. A draft of what was surely the longest of these, accompanying three pages of comments on printer’s specimen pages, contains a mass of detail and close argument, as well as calculations of spacing and lines per page, accompanied by fabrications of typeset pages made by Tolkien on his typewriter to illustrate his points. Although the finished version of his letter appears not to survive, and typically in correspondence Tolkien restrained his final remarks having vented his feelings in draft, it is clear from comments that he and Burchfield later made, and from the effect of the document, that his argument was compelling. He pointed out that the manuscripts of Ancrene Riwle were inconsistent by nature; that the aesthetics of a printed text were in the eye of the beholder (for his part, he found much that was unattractive in the versions of Ancrene Riwle published by EETS thus far); and that contrary to Burchfield’s view that line-end features of the manuscript could be dealt with in an introduction,

      the place of the line-ending is an important feature, palaeographical, textual, and linguistic, at least as important as other features carefully attended to. In any case I think it would be an advantage to have at least one version presented in a form bearing a closer relation to the manuscript arrangements; and the specially important and beautiful MS A [MS CCCC 402, the chief manuscript of Ancrene Riwle] seems a reasonable choice. [Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford]

      On 27 September Burchfield gracefully withdrew his opposition and renewed the support of the EETS Committee for Tolkien’s views.

      On 22 March 1959 Burchfield informed Tolkien that his introduction was now wanted by 28 May. It was not a good moment: Tolkien had recently had an operation for appendicitis, and his wife was also ill. Proofs of the text were now expected in June or July; but then the printers went on strike, and proofs did not reach Tolkien until a year later, in early June of 1960, by which time he was again occupied with other things. His introduction still was not ready on 24 June 1960, and when visited by his colleague *Norman Davis, now Director of EETS, Tolkien declared himself unable to complete it, and that he would give Davis his notes to be passed on to N.R. Ker to use if he wished. Tolkien felt too unwell also to correct proof; but then he suddenly rallied. As he wrote to Rayner Unwin:

      I am in fact utterly stuck – lost in a bottomless bog. … The crimes of omission that I committed in order to complete the [Lord of the Rings] are being avenged. The chief is the Ancrene Riwle. My edition of the prime [manuscript] should have been completed many years ago! I did at least try to clear it out of the way before retirement, and by a vast effort sent in the text in Sept. 1958. But then one of the misfortunes that attend on delay occurred; and my [manuscript] disappeared into the confusion of the Printing Strike. The proofs actually arrived at the beginning of this June, when I was in full tide of composition for the *Silmarillion, and had lost the threads of the M[iddle] E[nglish] work. I stalled for a while, but I am now under extreme pressure: 10 hours hard per diem day after day, trying to induce order into a set of confused and desperately tricky proofs, and notes. And then I have to write an introduction. [31 July 1960, Letters, pp. 301–2]

      He sent Burchfield the corrected proofs at last at the end of August.

      On 11 October 1960 Burchfield sent Tolkien an introduction on palaeographical aspects of MS CCCC 402 that N.R. Ker had completed. One month later, Norman Davis lunched with Tolkien, and having judged that there was no prospect of anything further from him for the introduction, gave permission that this could now go to press. But Tolkien had merely been distracted by other business, and replied with six pages of comments on Ker’s text early in the new year; these were accommodated, though the introduction was already set in type. Tolkien now also decided to write a supplementary introduction, which in the event became only a preface. During 1961 he made further comments on what Ker had written, correcting a serious error, and he proceeded to revise proofs under pressure of reminders from Burchfield. His progress was slowed by fibrositis and arthritis, but also by the unexpected discovery of editorial alterations, largely to do with capitalization, that Ker had made to the transcription of the Cambridge manuscript before it was set in type. When Tolkien finally delivered corrected proofs on 23 January 1962 he objected strongly to these changes, which had been made without his knowledge or consent. Burchfield defended Ker’s actions, which had been done without consulting the editor for lack of time, but agreed that the finished book should follow Tolkien’s instructions.

      Because there had been so many delays already, Tolkien was not shown the final proofs as further revised. He was not to know also that the Early English Text Society wished to have Ancrene Wisse in print in 1962 (it was published officially in December of that year; see further, Descriptive Bibliography B25) to coincide with the publication by George Allen & Unwin of a Festschrift in Tolkien’s honour (English and Medieval Studies Presented to J.R.R. Tolkien on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday), a mark of the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues. Burchfield himself was a contributor.

      Reviewers of Tolkien’s Ancrene Wisse uniformly welcomed its appearance and noted its long gestation. It was greeted, however, with disagreement over its methods and manner of presentation, notably its retention of original line-endings, and some small errors were pointed out. Arne Zettersten in English Studies 47 (1966) noted ‘a certain change or even improvement in editorial matters’ relative to earlier editions of Ancrene Riwle texts published by EETS (p. 291). In 1976 Zettersten edited the Magdalene College, Cambridge manuscript of Ancrene Riwle (Pepys 2498); later he stated that Tolkien gave him ‘splendid advice’ in regard to this work (see Zettersten, ‘Discussing Language with J.R.R. Tolkien’, Lembas Extra (2007), p. 21).

      Tom Shippey takes a firm stance against Tolkien’s approach to the Corpus Christi College manuscript in ‘Tolkien as Editor’, in A Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart D. Lee (2014). With only one exception, he notes, all of the EETS editions of Ancrene Riwle except Tolkien’s include introductions by their editor (the exception is R.M. Wilson’s edition, noted above). Shippey assigns Tolkien’s failure to provide an introduction in part to the time he devoted to The Lord of the Rings, but also to his ‘niggling’ – wasting time on unnecessary details – and to his insistence on line by line reproduction. Moreover, Tolkien’s ‘textual notes at the bottom of each page’ are

      all but entirely concerned with detail about initials, underlinings, capital letters, marginalia. There are virtually no emendations or corrections in what is a long text. … Tolkien clearly thought that this particular scribe knew what he was doing, so that his work was best left alone; while he also wanted to come as close as he could to reproducing in print the appearance of the manuscript. The EETS did not agree with him. Tolkien was creating a lot of extra work, not only for himself.

      Shippey СКАЧАТЬ