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#6 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: The north-west of the Old World, east of the Sea
Posts: 3,957
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Quote:
We know that, around the time he finished LotR, he was thinking of a Silmarillion of comparable length. His flurry of work at that time looks exactly like an attempt to create that work: a combination of annals, narrative, summaries, poems, and essays that could easily stretch to 500K+ words. Certainly he didn't have any such work at the time he offered it, but as Form says, Tolkien was a master of over-promising; he seems to have spent his entire life thinking that the Silmarillion material would be quick and easy to knock into shape for imminent publication, and then bogging himself down in the details. I have no trouble believing he expected it would take no more than a year or two to fix up the Lay, revise the Great Tales, and sort out the Quenta and the Annals. Sure, LotR had taken a while, but the Silmarillion material already existed, right? It just needed a little tweaking here and there, it'll be a doddle. ![]() In reality, your 10 years looks about right. By 1955, Tolkien had a final Ainulindale and Annals of Aman, a mostly complete Turin, Grey Annals, and Quenta, and the beginnings of Tuor and the Lay(s). At his 1920s writing speed he could have finished everything off in a year and a half; by the 1950s, I reckon 5 years would be pretty accurate, even if you include Akallabeth. But then he got sidetracked, and it never happened. hS
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