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May 2012 Addenda and Corrigenda

May 6, 2012

We have posted to our website today further addenda and corrigenda to The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, the new edition of The Lord of the Rings, The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, and our index to Tolkien’s Letters. Fourteen web pages have been updated, including the supplemental bibliographies for the Companion and Guide and the Reader’s Companion.

This time, we have drawn material from the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, various numbers of Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar, and some of the recent books of critical essays about Tolkien, among other sources, including comments sent us by readers. We thought it useful to revise and augment our bibliographies (in the Chronology) of works by Tolkien in Parma and VT, and to revise as well our list of Tolkien’s art for The Hobbit (also in the Chronology) now that The Art of The Hobbit is available as a standard reference.

from → J.R.R. Tolkien, Writings
3 Comments
  1. tolkienindex permalink
    May 17, 2012 7:08 am

    As always, many thanks for your continuing work!

  2. Troels Forchhammer permalink
    June 4, 2012 4:44 am

    Indeed, thank you for your dedication and hard work!

    And on a related note (though not exactly addenda or corrigenda), I was much intrigued to find this blog post by independent author and English teacher Roger Colby:

    Tolkien’s 10 Tips for Creating Epic Heroes

    It is particularly the first item in which he clearly identifies Tolkien’s use of ‘chief hero’ in the ?late 1951 letter to Milton Waldman as referring to Aragorn rather than Sam. You have, for instance in the Reader’s Companion equally clearly identified this as referring to Sam.

    I suppose that it may be a little sloppy to use ‘his’ to refer to the subject of the previous sentence when there’s a new subject in the current sentence, but I also think that such may be permissible in letters (I seem to recall someone pointing out other instances in Tolkien’s letters where he doesn’t follow the strict rules of grammar, but I can’t remember who or what it was). I think there could be several good arguments why ‘the chief hero’ is more likely to refer to Aragorn than to Sam, though I also recognise that there are some arguments that would favour Sam.

    I’d be very grateful to hear your thoughts on this matter — in particular if you have considered the interpretation suggested by Colby and rejected it (and, in that case, why), either here, in the LotR Fanatics Plaza: http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=244017 or on e-mail (troelsfo@gmail.com).

    Again, thank you both!

    • Wayne and Christina permalink
      June 4, 2012 7:15 am

      Thanks, Troels. We’ve replied to your thread on the LotR Plaza. As we say there, this is a point which needs at least an addendum on our website.

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