[William Cloud Hicklin]

Here's a taste:

[Tolkien] began with linear time-schemes, that is, listing all of each day’s events in a single sequence. As the story grew in narrative complexity, however, these proved inadequate and therefore, as he began what is now Book V in October 1944, chronological discrepancies which had crept into the text led him to make a time-scheme in parallel columns, allowing him day by day to drive abreast the actions of his various groups of characters. This first ‘synoptic’ chronology, which Christopher Tolkien designated S, petered out as Book V developed during 1946 and was replaced by another, which I will refer to as S2. S2 remained the working chronology through at least April 1948 (there is a dated note) and almost certainly until after the completion of the story that summer, although the time-scheme itself breaks off after the Battle of the Pelennor. S2 then served as the vehicle for Tolkien’s conversion of the calendar, which had been the Gregorian throughout the writing of the book, to the new Shire-reckoning. The final Chronology, S3, was the third and last of these ‘synoptic’ schemes, written most probably toward the end of the first phase of work on the Appendices circa 1949-50, and definitely after the first draft of the narrative had been completed. Even at this time the chronology was not settled, and Tolkien altered things to his satisfaction in both the creation of, and later emendations to, S3 which in turn led to revisions in the text.

Each of the three synoptic time-schemes can be associated with a major chronological upheaval: S with the adjustments required in October 1944; S2 with the addition of a month passing while the Fellowship was in Lórien; and S3 with Tolkien’s postponement of the Battle of the Pelennor and the consequent reworking of all the many threads converging on Minas Tirith. A further major upheaval, carried out by corrections to S2 and embodied in S3, was the conversion of the calendar to Shire-reckoning. The end result was the published text of The Lord of the Rings and a chronology consistent at all points, save a few small oversights, with Appendix B, ‘The Tale of Years.’ S3 is the precursor to the very compressed ‘The Great Years’ section of Appendix B; the dates and events (almost) entirely accord with it and indeed many of the published entries read as if they were abridged directly from those given here. Although there almost certainly must have been an intermediate stage, none of the surviving draft texts of ‘The Tale of Years’ have any section comparable to ‘The Great Years,’ merely annalistic entries for 3018 and 3019, and if such an intermediate stage existed it is now lost.

The ready availability of Appendix B does not render this Chronology a mere draft or curiosity! S3 can be said to represent, despite its laconic mode, Tolkien’s most complete accounting of the incidents of the great tale, not only those related in the narrative but also those transpiring offstage. It was intended as a final version: ‘canonical,’ for those who like the term. It contains a very great deal of information not found in the Appendices which is of remarkable interest; this is especially the case with regard to actions and motivations which occur for the most part in the background during The Lord of the Rings. Only here, for example, do we learn that...