Regarding the secret history of hobbits...
Clyde Kilby, an American professor, spent the summer of 1965 with JRRT, acting as an editorial assistant for the manuscripts of Silm. In his book
Tolkien and the Silmarils which is largely a personal memoire, he noted the following:
Quote:
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A good many readers believe that the Shire is England or a portion of England, and this Tolkien confirmed when I once asked him if there were Hobbits in the earlier ages. He plainly answered that there were none because Hobbits were English, a remark which both confirms geograpical delineations and has wide temporal implications.
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In other words, Tolkien was implying that, to have hobbits, England must intrude into the tales.
There is an interesting sidelight on this. In the early volumes of HoMe (BoLT 1 & 2, Shaping of Middle-earth, The Lost Road), there are many references to a "framing device" which JRRT used to present his story: specifically using Eriol or Aelfwine, who were seen as historical English figures and also Elf-friends, as the narrators for the tales. Additionally, the isle of England itself was located within the tale. This type of framing device was used by JRRT from 1916 through at least 1938; the figure of the English narrator persisted off and on down through the 1950s.
Where was this mythical England of the Silm? For the first few years, Tolkien placed it on the isle of Tol Eressea. However, by the early 1920s, he'd changed his mind
and decided that England was the shattered remains left over from the land of Beleriand after the flood. Specifically, England was identified with one of the few remaining isles called Leithian.
I read this last night, and flew out of my chair. For, of course, in our story, the hobbits are also stationed on an island which is made up of the shattered remains of Beleriand. Our own hobbits spent about 200 years travelling into Beleriand and living in Gondolin; they spent another 60 years or so in the prisons of Numenor. But the bulk of time--almost 3,300 years--was spent on that shattered splinter of Beleriand which Tolkien himself once suggested might be England.
Mith or Pio, did you see this association when we first put the hobbits there? (I didn't remember any of this then.)
I am tempted to change the name of Tol Fuin to Leithian, but few would understand what this implied.
sharon