A BRIEF HISTORY OF 'THE HOBBIT'

So, thanks to amazon.co.uk, et al., the word is now out that a new version of my edition of THE HOBBIT manuscript is on the way. Entitled A BRIEF HISTORY OF 'THE HOBBIT', it'll be about half the length of the full edition (the best text of which is the one-volume HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT [2011]). My goal is to include all the Tolkien from the original edition but to greatly condense my commentary. In short, the end result will be a book with a much greater percentage of Tolkien and a much smaller percentage of Rateliff.

Pursuant to this goal, I'm seeking to correct all the errata I can. So if you're aware of any errata in the one-volume H.o.H. volume --errors new to that edition, or older errors not corrected in it -- drop me a line via the comments and I'll check them against my list.

Here's a link to the amazon.co.uk listing for the new book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brief-History-Hobbit-John-Rateliff/dp/0007557256

--John R.

current reading: A GRAVEYARD FOR LUNATICS (Bradbury), TALES OF INSPECTOR LE GRASSE (Henderson)
current audiobook: THE DUNWICH HORROR
current dvd: rewatching THE HOBBIT (part one, extended edition), rewatching CALL OF CTHLUHU (silent movie)

Errata: 28 Days

So, one thing I learned while at Kalamazoo was that there's another error in THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT that had hitherto eluded me. And not a typo either, but a factual error on my part. Specifically, Kristine Larsen, a keen-eyed astronomer & Tolkien scholar, has read my attempt to set in order all Tolkien's notes trying to reconcile the recalcitrant moons in THE HOBBIT to match what our real-world moon would do. And apparently at two points when laying out Tolkien's adding up the passing days between phases I repeat Tolkien's error and give the moon's period as 28 days.

Which, of course is wrong: the moon's cycle takes twenty-nine and a half days from New Moon to New Moon (or indeed to repeat any point, whether Full Moon, three-days-past-full gibbous, or whatever).

I shd know better -- after all, I have one of those beautiful moonphase poster calendars hanging on the stairwell -- but if anything slipped by me I'm not surprised it was in this section, which was by far the hardest part to edit of the entire project, and not just for its illegibility. To see Tolkien's mind go round and round over the same points without being able either to resolve the contradictions or be willing to abandon a hopeless project (since they cd only be fixed by altering one or more of the "fixed dates") was bad enough, but editing it required me to get into the same frame of mind to try to follow his line of thinking, which led to a lot of near-sleepless nights those two weeks I was working on this section.

Unfortunately, I forgot to ask Kristine for the specific page numbers where my gaff occurred -- one I've located (page 828, Text Note 2), where I shd have followed up with a correction mentioning the actual length needed. I'll make an update to this post when I find the other.

Still, at least I'm only repeating Tolkien's mistake, rather than taking something Tolkien had right and changing it to be wrong, which would have been embarrassing. The King of Gaffs in the book remains my passing reference to Gower as the author of PIERS PLOWMAN, wh. is as bad as referring to "Shakespeare's DOCTOR FAUSTUS" wd have been.

--John R.

Errata

So, about a week ago now, I got an interesting letter from Brazil pointing out some mistakes I'd made in MR. BAGGINS. I'm always glad to get errata, especially since I lost all the saved email I'd received containing errata when the old computer went wonky a few months back.* It's even better when it's not a passage where I'd spotted a problem myself. In this case, my correspondent, Rodrigo Bergamaschi de Azevedo, pointed out three potential problems, all clustering in the discussion of Chapter IX and relating to the wood-elves and Elvenking.

First, he points out that when on page 407 I talk about Galadriel and FInrod's father, Finarfin, I state that "some of [his] children were golden-haired because of his Vanyar wife". In fact, it's Finarfin's mother, not his wife, who came from the Vanyar. So the point stands, but I've placed the intermarriage at the wrong point; it shd be one generation further back.

Second, in the line "neither a Light-elf (Vanyar) nor a Deep-elf (Noldor) but a Sea-elf (a Sindar, one of the Teleri of Middle-earth)", there's a slight disconnect between the singular Light-elf, Deep-elf, and Sea-elf with the parenthetical forms, which are plural. Obviously the sentence needs to be recast somewhat, and since I prefer the sound and appearance of the more familiar plural forms (Vanyar/Noldor/Sindar) over their less well known singular equivalents (Vanya/Noldo/Sinda) I'd rephrase it along the lines of "neither a Light-elf (one of the Vanyar) . . ." &c

Finally, the most interesting point is something no one else had pointed out to me before. On page 410 I stated that Thingol was "one of the original elves, the very first generation (said to number one hundred and forty-four) to awaken at Cuivienen, the elven Eden". In fact, as Rodrigo points out, this cannot be the case. His reasoning is twofold. First, we know that Thingol has a brother, who replaces him as leader of the Teleri after Thingol's ensnarement by Melian.** But the first elves to awaken were all of a generation: without parents, how can there be siblings?

Actually, I don't think this objection nullifies my suggestion, since we have the example of the Valar, all of whom belong to a single generation, that individuals created at the same time can still be "brothers" or "sisters". If Manwe and Melkor, Mandos and Lorien and Nienna, Orome and Nessa, why not Elwe and Olwe?.

But Rodrigo's second point is unassailable: that the original 144 elves all come in 72 mated pairs, with each awaking beside his or her mate (cf. HME.XII.420-424). And since it's a crucial part of Thingol's story that he met and married Melian, then obviously he could not have been of that first generation. Which raises the whole question of what happened to those original Awakened, and just how vast a span of time would have been needed to generate what must have been many generations of the whole vast elf-host of those who departed on the journey west and those who stayed behind.***

So, Thingol is definitely one of the patriarchs of Cuivienen, but not quite as primeval as I suggested. Good catch, Rodrigo.

......................

*i.e., all the errata I had not yet listed on my website -- the geniuses at the Apple Store, where I took the old laptop to be fixed, erased all my stored e-mail without telling me they were going to do that. Live and learn.

**in fact, he has two, since at a very late date (circa 1959?) Tolkien added a younger brother, Elmo, to Elwe and Olwe -- mentioned, I think, only once (page 350) of HME.XI: THE WAR OF THE JEWELS.

I find this one of Tolkien's occasional unfortunate namings, like Tirion upon Tuna -- he cd not have known about Sesame Street and Tickle-Me-Elmo, but still for me the name has 'hick' associations, most memorably demonstrated from Gygax's use of it in T1. Village of Holmett for the names of the two ranger brothers pretending to be the local dim-wits, Elmo and Otis (Elmo's sole line of dialogue is "My brudder Otis gave it to me!").

***The true answer, I suspect, is that this myth of the 144 is a v. late (again, circa 1959) addition which Tolkien did not take very seriously or bother to work out the larger implications of -- though he did show it to Clyde Kilby, so there was at least the potential of its fitting into The Silmarillion as he saw it at the time (summer 1966).

Lauching the New Website

So, about two years ago when I was finishing up the Introduction to MR. BAGGINS, my edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's original rough draft Mss of THE HOBBIT, I included the following brief announcement:

"For the use of future scholars who might wish to examine the manuscript readings for themselves, I have deposited at Marquette a copy of my complete line-by-line and page-by-page transcription of all the manuscript materials for The Hobbit in the Archives. I have also deposited a copy of Taum Santoski's unfinished edition [circa 1989] for those who wish to compare his readings with my own. Finally, I will also be establishing a website (www.JohnDRateliff.homestead.com) to list errata and changes as new material become available." (page xxviii, emphasis mine)

Despite my good intentions, a busy schedule and my inner Luddite unfortunately combined to prevent my being able to make good on the promise of getting my website up and running.*

Until now. Thanks to the awesome skills of Anne Trent, I now have my website up and running. You can visit it at www.sacnothscriptorium.com. It's a work in progress, and we'll be adding to it down the road, so let me know if you find any errors or discover any glitches.

And yes, it does include the errata list for HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT: if you find any misprints or errors in H.o.H. not listed here, please let me know so I can add it into the master list. Also, if you sent me in errata and I've listed it but didn't credit you, let me know so I can fix that (some I simply wrote into my reference copy without always indicating the source). In some such cases I'd already found the problem myself, but I know a few shd be credited to readers who sent them in via e-mails or comments to this blog.

So, enjoy.

--John R.

current audiobook: John Lawlor's C. S. LEWIS: MEMORIES AND REFLECTIONS [1998], read (wonderfully) by Bernard Mayes [2001].


*although this blog, launched in late March 2007, has in part filled the gap.

In Praise of Sharp-Eyed Readers

So, I'd missed a comment by 'Johan' to a previous post in which he pointed out an omission I'd missed. On page 835, TN5 reads "Book I [of LotR] ends with his [=Frodo's] collapse at the Ford and Book II with him awaking already safe in Rivendell some days later". As Johan points out, there's a verb missing in the second clause: it should read "and Book II begins with him". While I'm at it, "awaking", which is technically a transitive verb, really shd be "awakening", which can be intransitive or transitive as the occasion demands.

It's too late now to get this fixed in the US edition, but I'll pass it along to the good folks at HarperCollins for the trade paperback set, for which I'm beginning to gather a list of errata.


The second proposed correction by Johan relates to an illegible word on page 833. The passage reads "4 mm = 4/10 [illegible] = 20 miles" (this being the eighth line on page Ad.Ms.H.16a). Johan proposes, very reasonably, that the missing word is "centimetre", since 4 mm does in fact equal 0.4 cm. Unfortunately, this is not possible, since the illegible word seems to begin with a descender (i.e., a letter with a down-stroke, such as p- or q- or g- or y-). In fact, it turns out to be -f; looking at this squiggle again with a fresh eye yesterday I was able to crack it this time. It's not a single word but three separate ones run together: "of 50 miles". Thus, the correct reading of this passage shd be

"in the LR map 1 centimetre = 50 miles [;] the distance from Ford to head of path down is 4 mm = 4/10 of 50 miles = 20 miles."

Many thanks to Johan for having sparked my re-examination.

And, while I'm at it, many thanks to Jeff, author of my favorite blog, for showing me how to turn web addresses (such as http://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/) into links (such as grubbstreet).

--John R.

current reading: THE INTELLECTUALS & THE MASSES, by John Carey (who currently has some harsh things to say about Mr. Nietzsche).
current audiobook: JOHN ADAMS, by David McCullough (having gotten to the part where Adams, as envoy to the Dutch, just opened the world's first American embassy)