Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
The problem of course is that "later" could mean any time between the making of the amanuensis typescript, and 1973.
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Unless these texts went to Marquette with the initial, which would give a somewhat earlier
terminus ante quem, but your point is valid either way.
I think it's always dangerous to assume that Tolkien definitely meant a change to the story when he might have just been misremembering details... but there's a LOT of change to the First Age narratives between the 1930s and the Later Quenta texts, and whenever Tolkien happened to think in the moment he jotted down that idea that Melian might have come out from the west, it does seem at least a little bit like the germ of the idea that would come later: that Galadriel would sail from the west separately from the banned Noldor (with Teleporno and a couple other Teleri), and it certainly seems like the origin of the idea that takes hold in the Tale of the Years and later, that Galadriel had some connection with Melian and Menegroth.