Oversight, or changing conceptions?

[Galin]

Erg. My bad. Turns out the H&S reference I posted above relates to the specific passage of the golden house of Finrod, while another Appendix F reference changed to Finarphir.

Ballantine Books 1965: "Noblest of all was the Lady Galadriel, of the royal house of Finarphir and sister of Finrod Felagund, King of Nargothrond."

Yikes.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

( . . . ) Tolkien's prerogative. Who are we to tell him no? While he had never planned a 2d Ed, the necessity fell on his head and he decided to take advantage of the opportunity to bring LR into line with post-1953 developments in the First Age material.

We are Tolkien's readership and can say "no" by way of criticism anyway, just as if he'd kept changing the colour of the Dwarf hoods in The Hobbit. And Tolkien told himself no regarding inconsistency with already published work, so why not here as well?

In any case, I think JRRT was creative enough to work his Silmarillion material around what was said in LOTR about Finrod. And in general there wasn't that much already in print to "constrain" him concerning the First Age, relatively speaking.

Note also that the following year in The Road Goes Ever On, what he has to say about Galadriel doesn't really square with the LR at all points, either, unless you use a shoehorn and a hammer.

And so I get out shoehorn and hammer where (arguably) necessary, with respect to author-published works.

But why should I tire my arm with respect to Mithrellas when Appendix F defines Eldar as " . . . the name of the Three Kindreds that sought for the Undying Lands and came there at the beginning of Days (save the Sindar only)."

Thus, even if the legend is true, Mithrellas was not one of the Eldar with respect to the Three Unions.