New Tolkien coming!
 

I am pleased to be able to announce that Tolkien Studies has accepted my edition of JRRT's "Chronology of the Lord of the Rings" for publication. This is the manuscript from which Hammond and Scull quoted excerpts in their LR Reader's Companion, under the name of "Scheme," and the frontispiece to that volume is one of its pages.

No release date has been set.

Oh yes! You mentioned this in the thread about the Hostetter book, and I made 'oooooh' noises. :D So (forgive my academic-publishing illiteracy!) is the expectation that it will appear in the Tolkien Studies journal, or is there some other way in which it will be published?

hS

That's unclear. Currently the editors are putting TS 18 to bed, and it will come later; but whether it will have to wait for TS 19 next year or will get a special issue to itself has yet to be determined.

congrats.

A hearty congratulations to you, WCH!

Congrats WCH!

I hear it puts an end to the Balrog controversy.

January 25: Gandalf notes that the Balrog doesn't have wings, and casts it down. Gandalf's notebook lies on the peak.

Or something like that ;)

Haha, I learned this a bit late, just one day after I took pains trying to transcribe the page shown in Reader's Companion. Can't wait for the full release!

Could you tease a little bit for me? I'm wondering if the circle beside "March 8" in the scheme represents "Full Moon". And "⊘" beside "March 9" represents Tolkien changed the date of Full Moon.

Congratulations!

Congratulations, William! That is fabulous news!

Yes and yes. JRRT sometimes used drawn symbols and sometimes abbreviations to keep track of lunar phases, but track them he did. I speculate in my paper, just a bit, about that second, deleted moon. That was a very important one, as well: the one which Pippin sees from the back of Shadowfax on the night of the war-beacons, which Frodo sees setting over the Forbidden Pool, and which governs the muster of the Rohirrim.

(BTW, that page is as legible as news headlines compared to a typical page!)

Thanks, so glad to learn that!

I can only guess it might track to a note quoted in HoMe7 p. 369:my father wrote at the head of the first page of it: Moons are after 1941-2 + 6 days. He changed this to + 5 days, and added: thus Full Moon Jan. 2 is Jan. 7.

BTW, that easy page already racked my brains, you worked miracle!

Yes, that was the system he used consistently for most of the book, starting I believe at the time he wrote the episode in 'The Great River' where Sam is puzzled by the new moon and the passage of time in Lorien (which was written right at the end of 1941, probably during the Christmas holiday). He even considered but decided against bringing in the real-world lunar eclipse of March 2 1942. Once committed he stayed with it, including revising the moon in the earlier parts of the story... but he couldn't bring himself to delete the striking scene of the waning moon (impossibly) illuminating the west-facing Gates of Moria in the early evening.

How many pages is your edition? It is book length or article length? You had access to the manuscripts at Marquette? So many questions!:)

Not a book, but rather longish to be an article. In fiction terms it might be a novella. I really can't tell how many pages in TS' rather small format it might take up, nor how much prefatory material the editors may add, but in regular letter-size it's around 70 pages single-spaced with narrow margins.

Of course, the bulk of that is my own wittering and footnotes. The actual JRRT Chronology boils down to 15 pages.

Manuscripts at Marquette: well, I have never handled the originals; I was sent photocopies. I was fortunate-- they don't usually allow those out of the stable.

Here's a formal announcement from David Bratman, one of the editors of TS. Congratulations, William Cloud Hicklin.

https://kalimac.blogspot.com/2021/11..._x9WDsVS31tghg

Yes. it's happening. Although not until springtime

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.......

Congratulations! I believe you told me about this a very long time ago, but I might be inventing that in my mind. In any event, I look forward to reading it.

I just noted a somewhat-related trivia: the 1941-2 calendar which JRRT used as the reference for moon phases in his time-schemes, is probably his "Oxford University Pocket Diary, 1941-2" shown in Maker of Middle-earth 246-7. For example, on Jan.16 1942 that diary says: "Sun rises 8.5, sets 4.25. New Moon, 9.32 p.m.", which would correspond to Jan.22 SR1419 New Moon in Time-Scheme III.

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

That's easy. Just assume that First Yule is Christmas Eve and Second Yule is Christmas. It's just a matter of counting the days after that. I thought this was settled a long time ago.
One thing to keep in mind about a new moon is that it's not visible to the naked eye for about 18 hours after the astronomical event. I have a feeling Tolkien didn't realize this when considering what Sam saw. Unless Hobbits have really good eyesight.
The lunar eclipse of the night of Mar 2, 1942 was a central lunar eclipse. These are very deep ones and somewhat rare. The next one visible in Britain didn't occur until 1953.

By the way, the actual date for the Fall of Barad-dûr, if you can accept there is one, is March 13, 4502 BC (Gregorian proleptic).

Tolkien in his novels used the traditional definition of New Moon (still in use in Islamic & Hebrew calendars), ie. the earliest visible waxing crescent. The calendar uses the astronomic definition of New Moon, which is about 18~36 hours before the traditional "New Moon". In his timeline he confused the two definitions, so his time from new moon to full moon is 1~2 days shorter than the primary world, and full moon to new moon 1~2 days longer.

Thank you.
The fact that he used "Oxford University Pocket Diary, 1941-2" is very interesting. You wouldn't have a spare copy, would you?
Is there a chance you might know what kind of maps of Europe he may have used? I'm thinking of something that the maps of Middle-earth might be based on; whether merely a subconscious influence to an outright tracing.

No idea. The only page I know of that diary is the page shown in Maker item 87.

And today I note he might have used another source for his moon rise and fall time (because the 1941-2 diary only shows sun rise and fall time, plus moon phases). That's Marquette MSS-4/2/29/18a shown in Tolkien: Voyage en Terre du Milieu Fig.189 ( https://twitter.com/zionius/status/1486565751788310530) It says "based on Moon-hours(?) May 6-15 1944". The date exactly matches Letters no.69 on May 14 1944, where he said he spent hours trying to fix moonrise/set time.
However, the moon rise and fall time recorded in that manuscript doesn't fit the actual time in May 6-15 1944 at all. So I still don't know how he got those numbers.

I spent a little time trying to solve that mystery. Take a close look at the faintly printed numbers. These match the rise and set times in Oxford from May 6-15 if you subtract exactly 4 hours. Then it appears that a 12:37 time was changed to exactly midnight along with all the other numbers being adjusted by 37 minutes as well. Near the end he seems to make some mistakes in the ordering.
The difference in time between moonrise and moonset varies by latitude so you can be sure that he got his information from a source that calculated it for someplace near Oxford's. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich? London?

https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/uk/...th=5&year=1944

When looking at these numbers keep in mind they might be using double summer time because of the war effort. So initially subtract 6 hours instead of 4.

Amazing discovery! I think the time difference between the pencil numbers and actual moonrise & set time is 6 hours. Such as May 11 0:07-8:40 > 6:11-2:41, May 12 1:11-9:31 > 7:11-3:37, etc. The timezone for the date on timeanddate.com seems to be UTC+1, so it's normal daylight saving time.

Except that it isn't that easy; and if one attempts the conversion you describe you can't get from his original Gregorian dates to the finished SR dates.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Can you give me an example?

After a couple of false starts, the conversion Tolkien wound up making was March 1 = March 1, with the rest of the calendar extended before and after that pivot-point or fulcrum. In other words, if you were to back-convert Appendix B to Gregorian using either your suggested method, or the 'canonical' Jan 1 = 2 Yule, you won't recreate the Gregorian dates he actually used when writing the book.

There were a couple of reasons why he did so (and he even, for once, left a note), but the primary one was to ensure that Sauron's fall remained on March 25.

OTOH, he had to add a couple of days to the journey from Rivendell to Hollin, to retain the Departure on December 25. While Tolkien was not one to smack the reader in the face with Christian allusions a la Lewis, nonetheless they are in there.

Provisional date
 

FWIW, after various COVID and supply-chain related delays, the provisional publication date is now mid-August

What's interesting about those slips (there are 3 of them) is that they represent the backs of "City of Oxford Air Raid Precautions Warden's Report Forms"- and in his letter to Christopher he mentions having sat up until 1 am on duty. So I can well imagine he was sorting out his moonrises while sitting, bored to death, in that little sandbagged bunker.

It's fascinating to think that he was creating such entrancing works while doing mundane tasks.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's just about officially here
 

On the Project Muse website, where you can pre-order the e-version (available in ca. 2 weeks), and read brief excerpts:

https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/48264

Hard copies from Duke University Press/WVUP should follow in September https://wvupjournals.dukeupress.edu/tolkien-studies

It must be pointed out that it comes as part of an annual subscription which also includes the regular volume of TS, to be published in a few months. Unfortunately, that's rather more costly than I would like (60 USD).

Congratulations!
 

Congratulations, William Cloud Hicklin, on your work finally appearing! :cool:

As Inziladun said, it's interesting that the Professor was sorting out much of the chronology while 'doing his bit' to protect Oxford during the Second World War:

https://museumofoxford.org/oxford-at...e-20th-century

https://www.oxford-royale.com/articl...ond-world-war/

William Cloud Hicklin. Purchased. Congratulations.Excellent work. Thank you very much for your analisys and showing more material from the Professor.

Greetings.

Congratulations, amazing work! So many mysteries are finally solved.
I have a few tiny questions about the transcription part:

The time format is inconsistent, sometimes converted to American style (eg. 3:30) and sometimes not. The MS always used UK style (3.30).
What's the meaning of the multiple asterisks in S3?
p76 what's the meaning of the three left quotation marks?
p82 "17 21". It seems "17" should be crossed out.

Also, I find images of 5 pages of MSS 4/2/18 (pages 3,6,8,9,10), and compared them with your reading:
p44 On the bottom of "17 Tu." cell something was deleted, is it possible to decipher that? Is the deleted word on "18" cell really "LQ"? The MS doesn't look like so to me. (Of course the image I have is very blur so I could probably be wrong) Also, I think Tolkien later rejected moving the boxed cell on Jan 18 to Jan 17, by adding bars on the arrow. So it fixes the inconsistency discussed in footnote 53. (RC 360 also says this event is Jan 18)
p54 Is it possible to decipher the deleted words after "At 8 a.m."?
p64 Missing the full stop at the end of "They camp 20 miles or so on way".
p64 "about 35 m. p. day.[89]" p65 "89. 36 miles per day: see note 99.". It should be both "35".
p66 "and camps 30 miles on way." seems to be "and camps 30 miles east on way." in the MS, which is also the reading in RC 542.
p74 The "F. 16" cell has a deleted "LQ" unmentioned in transcription. Is that connected with the rejected LQ on p44?
p117 "with the moonrise and set times adjusted by 30 minutes". As James the Just said in this thread, I think the adjustment is 37 minutes, or approximately 40m/0.5h. But it can't be approximated to 30m.

Update: I compared the reading in Chronology (C) with the quotes in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (3rd ed., RC), and note several tiny differences. Without (or even with) the images it's hard to say which one is correct. Here are them (I have ignored editorial differences such as battlefield/battle field):
RC194: "Glorfindel set out from Rivendell on 9 October." C36 says it's Oct 10, according to footnote 32 Tolkien mistakenly marked it as Oct 9 and then corrected.
RC348: "They pass Gate of Argonath and come to Lake Hithoel (1.30 pm)". C52: "They pass Gate of Argonath and come to Lake Nen Hithoel (1:30 p.m)".
RC360: "Sarn Gebir". C46: "Sarngebir".
RC361: February 23 "The Orcs dismayed, but Grishnákh crosses Anduin and daringly pushes down west shore in pursuit. He believes Coy. is making for Minas Tirith." C53 says this entry was moved to February 24.
RC379: "then need long rest...they can trot ?from 6 mph for about 50 ?miles." C57: "then need a long rest...they can run [?for] 6 mph for about 50 miles."
RC410: "Wormtongue flies to Isengard". C60: "Wormtongue flees to Isengard."
RC455: "Slagmounds". C62: "Slag-mound".
RC484: "see last glimpse of sun". C66: "see last gleam of sun".
RC507: "March 5: 11.30 leaves Dolbaran". C138: "March 5 11.20 leaves Dolbaran"
RC508: "ride 69 miles". C138: "ride 68 miles".
RC508: "Pippin sees moon-rise at 9 pm and". C138: "Pippin sees moon-rise at 9 pm [illeg]".
RC508: ", 176 miles from Edoras". C138 says this sentence is rejected.
RC531: "According to Scheme, on 6 March they left Helm's Deep at about 4.00 p.m.,". C64 says it's "1 pm".
RC538: "slowly by hidden path in lower mountains." C64: "steadily by hidden paths in the mountains,".
RC542: "30 miles east on way". C66 "30 miles on way".
RC587: " reaching Calembel on Ciril.". C66: ". Reaches Calembel on Ciril.".
RC620: "Ring destroyed". C78: "Ring is destroyed".
RC639: "July [10>] 18: Éomer returns from Rohan with picked body of Riders.". C82: "July [10>18>] 17 Éomer returns from Rohan with picked body of Riders.", and footnote 130 says the change 18>17 conflicts the text and Appendix B.
RC653: "Scheme notes that the distance from Weathertop to Bree is ninety-five miles." I can't find this info in C.

Zionius, thank you for such a detailed reading! It's very nice to know people are paying attention.

I'll try to address your points in order

1) the "quotation marks" on p. 76 are ditto marks; Tolkien indicating a twice-repeated entry.
2) P. 80: The transcription is correct; in this instance T neglected to cross out 17.
3) p. 44 Tu. 17- two(?) words in faint pencil which have been irrecoverably covered up by the ink. The first might just possibly be "LQ," but that's really a guess. On the 18th it really did say "LQ" before being struck out.
4) p.54 "Is it possible to decipher the deleted words..."- theoretically it might be possible, but it has proved impossible for me!
5) p.64 That is one of a few missing full stops I corrected on the proofs but which the printers were disinclined to fix at the eleventh hour
6) p.64 - 35/36 mpd: that is correct. Here T wrote 35, but in the note referenced in Note 99 it is 36.
7) p.66 Mea culpa! I somehow left out the "east," will have to put out an errata list!
8) p.74 The erroneous "LQ" had been in my original 'diplomatic' transcription, but was among an appreciable number of unimportant errors on Tolkien's part I chose to omit in the published version
9) p. 117 Yes, I ballparked the number, and 40 minutes would have been a somewhat better approximation; I didn't think it especially important in an off-topic footnote. Probably should have just said 37. Another one for the errata list!

TBC

p. 36 Glorfindel Oct 9/10. I am pretty sure I have it correct here, although it is easy to see how H&S could have interpreted the manuscript as associating the Glorfindel line with the 9th.

p.46 Sarngebir/Sarn Gebir. As the note observes, Tolkien here reverted to the older form. H&S regularized it in their transcription but the original in this spot is one word.

p. 52: "Lake Hithoel" H&S simply made a mistake here; it's definitely Lake Nen Hithoel.

p.53: Moved to the 24th- maybe. The entry is circled in pencil, with a smudge at the bottom which might be read as a directional arrow, but I didn't think it clear enough to include.

Several of the other contested readings are functions of the fact that Tolkien's handwriting was always small and often horrible, and there is enough deduction and educated guess-work involved that two different readers will inevitably arrive at two different specific words.

p. 138: It's 11.20, almost definitely. It's possible to read the digit as a 3, but I'm pretty sure it's a 2.

68 vs 69 miles: Again, 9 is possible but I'm pretty sure it's an 8. The "69" may be a backreading from Gandalf's Ride, but the original entry here necessarily predates that.

"Gandalf halts 176 miles from Edoras"- this is a case where I silently repaired a minor JRRT error. He only actually struck through "Gandalf halts," but it is evident that the next line "176 miles from Edoras" was also rejected, since the next sentence contradicts it (and 192 accords with Gandalf's Ride). This may have overstepped my (self-imposed) editorial bounds, but I felt two contradictory sentences back to back would confuse the reader

1 pm/4 pm: The entry originally had "10 a.m.," which Tolkien crossed out, writing 1 pm above. I have no idea where H&S got 4.

p.62 Slag-mound. It's definitely singular, H&S must have added the S to regularize it to the published text. The hyphen is not so definite- it might just be a leading serif to the M, but ordinarily when Tolkien did that (he didn't always), the serif is well above the line and curved. T was highly variable in his use of hyphenated words (e.g. hog-back vs hogback; Zirak-zigil vs Zirakzigil), but on balance I think he used a hyphen here.


p.82 Eomer and his picked body. Now, that's interesting. T definitely wrote in 17 above 18 (which has a very bold cross-stroke or crossout). However, a faint penciled line might tie the 17 to a new moon symbol, written beside the original 17 later changed to 22 (Theoden's cortege). Therefore you may be right (and my Note 130 an absurdity)

p.78 "Ring is destroyed." That is correct, although the "is" is very indistinct and tangled up with the end of "Ring."

Oh, yes, the asterisks. Tolkien mostly used them to denote important dates: Frodo's wounding at Weathertop, the Council of Elrond, the Breaking of the Fellowship, Helm's Deep, the fall of Sauron (really big one there).

Mr. Hicklin, thank you very much for taking time for this extremely detailed answer! I only have three remaining questions:

p. 44. I think maybe Tolkien later rejected moving the boxed cell on Jan 18 to Jan 17, by adding bars on the arrow. So it fixes the inconsistency discussed in footnote 53. (RC 360 also says this event is Jan 18)

And I find pictures of two more MS pages, so two new errata suggestions for C40:
"9 [6>]8 [F>]𝒮". The MS have two lines, one seems to be "8 7 S" with "7 S" removed, another seems to be "9 7 S" with "7 S" changed to "8 𝒮". So I think Tolkien's intention might be "[8 7 S>]9 8 𝒮".
"they go by winding ways." should be "they go by winding ways.)".