The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull
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and thirteen others sign a letter to the General Board, requesting that the Chair of Comparative Philology be raised from Grade B to Grade A.
25 February 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
26 February 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. The Committee discuss what might be read only in the Library and what might be borrowed. Tolkien raises the question of making the bulk of the Napier Collection (the Library’s Old and Middle English holdings, based on the personal library of A.S. Napier) open to circulation.
27 February 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.
6 March 1931 Tolkien attends the sixtieth anniversary dinner of the Johnson Society of Pembroke College. He and the Society’s Secretary, E.V.E. White, give the toast to ‘The College’.
13 March 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. – He also attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The Faculty Board regrets the refusal of the General Board to provide for another Reader in English Literature. David Nichol Smith and Tolkien undertake to prepare for the next meeting of the Board a draft reply on the needs of the faculty. – Tolkien also attends a Pembroke College meeting.
14 March 1931 Hilary Full Term ends.
16 March 1931 First Public Examination (Pass Moderations) begins. Tolkien is an examiner.
April 1931 The Tolkien family take a holiday in Milford-on-Sea, the home of Michael Tolkien’s godfather, Father Augustin Emery, formerly parish priest at Great Haywood. John Tolkien will remember walking with his father along the shingle spit to Hurst Castle where Charles I had been imprisoned, a fort jutting out into the Solent (conversation with the authors).
7 April 1931 Kenneth Sisam writes to Tolkien, explaining that the Clarendon Chaucer should have fewer notes than an ordinary school edition, as it is not to be for beginners, and that the notes should be concerned only with major difficulties.
9 April 1931 Kenneth Sisam writes to Tolkien, forwarding a query from a correspondent about a possible connection between Middle English aliri and the word aleary in a children’s rhyme.
26 April 1931 Trinity Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: The Battle of Brunanburh on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 28 April; the Old English Exodus (continued) on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 30 April; and Old English Textual Criticism (continued) on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 30 April. See note. – C.L. Wrenn replaces Tolkien as the supervisor of E.V. Williams.
29 April 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
5 May 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. He again proposes that the Napier books, except the most valuable, be allowed to circulate. With the Committee’s agreement he is left to obtain the necessary permission from the Faculty Board.
8 May 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.
15 May 1931 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He proposes that C.L. Wrenn be appointed to the University Lectureship in English Language for a period of five years from the first day of Michaelmas Term 1931. David Nichol Smith and Tolkien present a draft reply to the General Board on the needs of the faculty, which the English Faculty Board approves. The report of the Committee on the Regulations is presented, but the Board decides to consider it at an adjourned meeting on 22 May. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien and C.T. Onions examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of *Alistair Campbell of Balliol College, The Production of Diphthongs by ‘Breaking’ in Old English from 700 to 900.
16 May 1931 Tolkien reads a paper, Chaucer’s Use of Dialects (*Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale), to the Philological Society in Oxford.
22 May 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. This deals with, among other matters, the constitution of the Board of Faculty of English Language and Literature, and a statement asking the Board its policy in regard to the Honour School of English. – Tolkien attends an adjourned meeting of the English Faculty Board at 3.00 p.m. The new regulations for the syllabus of the English School are amended and adopted to come into force with examinations in 1933. Among documents discussed is one which considers whether ‘English Literature from 1850 till Present Time’ should be an A Paper. Tolkien submits a typescript, based on a statement provided possibly by H.F.B. Brett-Smith and probably representing the views of several members of the faculty, which does not approve the compulsory inclusion of Literature after 1800 in the work of all candidates taking the Modern Literature Course III, and which recommends that the existing papers be retained. To this Tolkien adds a manuscript note: ‘Professor Tolkien would agree to the modification but considers it a matter primarily for the decision of those mainly concerned with the direction of the work in modern literature’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/3).
5 June 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting.
10 June 1931 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
11 June 1931 English Final Honour School Examinations begin.
12 June 1931 Tolkien and C.T. Onions examine Alistair Campbell of Balliol College viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis, The Production of Diphthongs by ‘Breaking’ in Old English from 700 to 900, at 2.30 p.m. in the Examination Schools.
15 June 1931 Tolkien and Onions sign their report (written by Tolkien) on their examination of Alistair Campbell.
17 June 1931 Tolkien is listed in the Oxford University Gazette for 17 June as a member of the Committee for Comparative Philology, concerned with Section D (Germanic), and ‘will see Diploma Students by appointment and direct their work in the respective Sections offered by them’ (p. 680).
19 June 1931 Tolkien attends a General Board meeting. – He also attends an English Faculty Board meeting, at which he is appointed to a committee to consider the memorandum of the General Board on the Final Pass School.
20 June 1931 Trinity Full Term ends.
24 June 1931 Encaenia.
28 July 1931 Tolkien attends a meeting of the English Faculty Board at 12.15 p.m.
?Autumn 1931 Tolkien writes a paper, A Secret Vice, for delivery on 29 November. The ‘vice’ is the creation of languages for personal enjoyment. The paper includes examples of poetry in Elvish languages (with versions in English) related to the ‘Silmarillion’ mythology: Oilima Markirya (The Last Ark), Nieninque, and Earendel (*Earendel at the Helm) in Qenya, and a ‘fragment’ in Noldorin. Associated with this are word-lists in Qenya (*‘Qenya Word-Lists’).
September 1931 Tolkien continues to write the Lay of Leithian, which may have reached line 3860 at the beginning of the previous October. He notes the following dates on the manuscript, all in Canto XIII: line 3881, 14 September; line 3887, 15 September; line 3962, 16 September; line 4029, 14 September (sic); line 4045, 16 September (sic); line 4085, 17 September. He will write no further dates in the manuscript, but will continue it to line 4223, Canto XIV. He apparently abandons the poem, leaving it unfinished, in September 1931. – Tolkien’s eldest son, John, begins to attend the Oratory School, a Catholic boarding school, once in Birmingham, now at Caversham, near Reading in Berkshire.
19–20 September 1931 Tolkien dines with C.S. Lewis and their friend *H.V.D. ‘Hugo’ Dyson at Magdalen College, Oxford. After dinner they stroll along Addison’s Walk in the college grounds, discussing metaphor and myth. But they are ‘interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent