Quote:
Originally Posted by gondowe
The structure of the proposed material for publication showed in this letter could orientate in some ways but I think does not fit with a TftE project whatever is.
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I just got halfway through writing a post on this letter over in Books, and then read it more carefully and had to scrap it: there's a headnote directly above what
Arvegil posted which reads "[* proposed for publication]". The only asterisks in what follows are attached to: "Music of the Ainur", "The History of the Eldar", "The Rings of Power", "The Downfall of Numenor", and "The Lord of the Rings" (
The Hobbit being already published). So Tolkien
wasn't proposing to publish the Annals, the Lay, and so on; he was specifically
not doing that.
In that light, the note after the First Age makes more sense than it did on my first readthrough: he doesn't want to publish items 2-8
at all, but feels that "The History of the Eldar" needs expansion around the Great Tales, which should draw from the fuller versions. Similarly, he didn't at that time envisage "The Languages of the Third Age" or the two Third Age Annals being published with LotR, though in the event the Annals at least made it in.
(He also notes that
The Silmarillion - the First and Second age stories taken together - is probably about the length of
The Hobbit, which is a step down from his belief elsewhere that it would match the length of LotR.)
Maybe you both already noticed this, but I misunderstood the new list on my first few readings, so I wanted to mention.
hS