[William Cloud Hicklin]

The whole thing becomes a mess largely because Tolkien himself futzed around for nearly 20 years after the LR was published and never got the Silmarillion finished. Therefore it's hard to tell what he considered "done" (and even then of course he would still go back and change things). It's easy, but in my mind misleading, just to draw a bright line distinction between 'published' and 'unpublished'; confusion and uncertainty are part of Tolkien studies, not something to be airbrushed out of the picture. (Was Celeborn a Danian, a Sinda, or a Teler? All three).

There are a couple of cases where it's fairly safe to say the work was "finished" and in Tolkien's mind ready for publication, whenever the rest of the volume was done. These would include the Akallabeth, which T was willing to leave unaltered once done and which CT hardly had to edit (the only significant change was Fionwe > Eonwe); Ak also happens to be fully consonant with the LR appendices.

Things get a lot messier when it comes to the First Age, especially the early (pre-rebellion) and late (post-Turin) portions: the former because Tolkien decided in the late 50s on a massive cosmological upheaval, and the latter because he just never got around to it.