600,000?

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

While Tolkien may have "counted" incorrectly, I have no doubt that he contemplated a significant expansion of the text in the order of three to six times its existing length. Whether he would have maintained a base text in the form of the almost historical narrative that he had created with added "appendices" of expanded versions of the three great tales, or whether he hoped to expand the text in its entirety cannot be known with certainty. We can glimpse what he intended in the versions of Hurin/Turin and Tour/Gondolin found in Unfinished Tales. That he never actually put his vision down on paper in its entirety is tragic.

I do not think he would have included The Lay of Leithian (except perhaps as snippets) in the Silmarillion. He had abandoned any realistic hope that it might be published even before Unwin "rejected" it.

So then why did he work on it? Unless I'm badly misreading, once LotR was completed (not even published!) Tolkien launched straight into a massive expansion project on the Silmarillion. Over the next 5 years, he worked up new Annals for almost the entire First Age; revised and expanded the Lay of Leithian and I think the Lay of the Children of Hurin as well; began long versions of both Tuor and Turin; rewrote/revised Ainulindale and the Quenta; and drafted several philosophical essays, at least one of which (Athrabeth) he later considered to be "Silmarillion material".

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