The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull
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1937. – He also attends a Pembroke College meeting.
17 June 1933 Trinity Full Term ends. – The annual general meeting of Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag confirms with applause Tolkien’s honorary membership.
20 June 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
21 June 1933 Encaenia.
26 July 1933 Tolkien and Hugo Dyson entertain the Lewis brothers at dinner in Exeter College. Dyson and Tolkien are in exuberant form, especially Dyson. As it is vacation they dine in the Common Room with various members of Exeter and their guests. Nevill Coghill is among those present. They eat a dinner of cold soup and lobster salad served with cider, then retire to another room to drink sauterne, and to deck chairs in the garden for coffee. After some conversation Tolkien, Dyson, the Lewis brothers, and a clergyman walk to Magdalen College and stroll in the deer park. At about 10.00 p.m. they adjourn to the Magdalen Common Room for drinks. The party breaks up about 10.20.
?End of July 1933 Tolkien and his wife attend Prize Day at the Oratory School, where their son John is a pupil. Also among the attendees are Professor and Mrs Francis de Zulueta and Father Vincent Reade. A paper by the Right Reverend Dom John Chapman, O.S.B., the Abbot of Downside, on Cardinal Newman and the Oxford Movement, is read in Chapman’s absence by Lord FitzAlan, chairman of the School’s Board of Governors, followed by remarks by Lord Rankeillour ‘on the circumstantial difficulties which had militated against the practical success of so many of Cardinal Newman’s admirable projects’, excepting the Oratory School which has had ‘a steady output of achievement’ (‘Prize Day at the Oratory School’, The Tablet, 5 August 1933, p. 175).
?Summer 1933 John Tolkien and his father erect a trellis in front of 20 Northmoor Road to screen their garden from the eyes of passers-by.
?August–early October 1933 Probably during the summer vacation Tolkien begins to write lectures on ‘Beowulf: General Criticism’ which he will give during Michaelmas Term 1933. These may be the work first called Beowulf with Critics and later Beowulf and the Critics (see *Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics). Tolkien will later produce a revised and enlarged version of the lectures, presumably for ‘Beowulf: General Criticism’ as delivered in Michaelmas Term 1934 or 1936.
14 September 1933 While driving with his family to visit relatives in Birmingham, Tolkien passes through Hall Green, formerly the hamlet of Sarehole. He finds that most of the scenery and buildings he remembers from his boyhood have been destroyed or much altered. He will record in his diary that Sarehole had become ‘a huge tram-ridden meaningless suburb where I actually lost my way’ (quoted in Biography, p. 124).
?October 1933 Tolkien submits, probably by invitation, a poem, Firiel (*The Last Ship), for publication in the Chronicle of the Convents of the Sacred Heart, the journal of a Roman Catholic order which has an Oxford branch (established 1929) at 11 Norham Gardens. Firiel dates from the early 1930s, and is possibly written at this time. Tolkien is in close contact with the Oxford convent: Priscilla Tolkien will recall going there for children’s parties in the summer and also at Christmas when her father provided entertainment.
8 October 1933 Michaelmas Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Beowulf: General Criticism on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 10 October; The Origins of the English Language on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 10 October; Old English Prose Pieces (Cynewulf and Cyneheard, Ohthere and Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos) on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 12 October; and The Historical and Legendary Traditions in Beowulf and Other Old English Poems on Thursdays and Fridays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 12 October. He will continue to supervise B.Litt. students A.F. Colborn, L.E. Jones (later L.E. Rogers), and E.O.G. Turville-Petre. See note.
?Michaelmas Term 1933 Edward Tangye Lean having graduated from Oxford, the name of his literary club, ‘The Inklings’, is transferred (not earlier than this term) to an ultimately more famous group of friends which by now has already formed around C.S. Lewis. The new group, informal and of varying composition, will usually meet in a pub, often the Eagle and Child (or ‘Bird and Baby’, see *Oxford and environs) in St Giles’, for an hour or two before lunch on Tuesdays to talk and drink together; and in Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College after dinner on Thursdays, where they will read compositions for the criticism or acclaim of those present, otherwise letting conversation wander where it will. These meetings will become an important part of Tolkien’s life for almost twenty years. See note.
10 October 1933 The future novelist Barbara Pym, then an undergraduate at Oxford, notes in her diary that Tolkien gave an amusing lecture on Beowulf this morning.
11 October 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
19 October 1933 By this date Tolkien, as chairman, has written a six-page report of the examiners in the Honour School for 1933.
20 October 1933 Tolkien attends a special meeting of the Committee on Comparative Philology at 4.15 p.m. in the Music Lecture Room of the Clarendon Building.
27 October 1933 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He is re-elected to the Library Committee. The report of the examiners in the English Honour School for 1933 (of which Tolkien is chairman) is presented. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien supervisor of probationer B.Litt. students J.E. Blomfield (*Joan Elizabeth Turville-Petre) of Somerville College and M.E. Griffiths of the Society of Oxford Home-Students, who are interested in Old English and Middle English philology respectively.
2 November 1933 A member of the Convents of the Sacred Heart in Oxford writes to Tolkien, acknowledging receipt of his poem Firiel.
3 November 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
9 November 1933 Tolkien’s poem Errantry is published in the Oxford Magazine for 9 November 1933.
15 November 1933 The Early English Text Society Committee votes to publish the English, French, and Latin texts of the Ancrene Riwle, edited under the auspices of the Society in conjunction with American scholars.
23 November 1933 Tolkien chairs an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. – Later he has tea with the Lewis brothers and an ex-pupil of C.S. Lewis.
28 November 1933 Tolkien completes the application forms for J.E. Blomfield and M.E. Griffiths to be accepted as full B.Litt. students. Blomfield’s thesis is to be The Origins of Old English Orthography, with Special Reference to the Representation of the Spirants, and Griffiths’ thesis is to be Notes and Observations on the Vocabulary of Ancrene Wisse MS CCCC 402.
30 November 1933 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The Applications Committee has accepted J.E. Blomfield and M.E. Griffiths as full B.Litt. students; Tolkien is to continue as their supervisor.
1 December 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
2 December 1933 Michaelmas Full Term ends.
Early December 1933 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes a short letter to his children, dated 2 December. He has had ‘a good many letters’ from them.
4 December 1933 Tolkien goes for a walk with C.S. Lewis.
21 December 1933 Tolkien writes to R.W. Chambers, thanking him for a note and conveying best wishes for Christmas and the new year. Either with his letter or separately, he sends Chambers an elaborately calligraphic and illuminated copy of a poem he has written, *Doworst, a satirical account of the vivas at Oxford, written in the style and metre of the fourteenth-century poem Piers Plowman.
Christmas