The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull
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Schools, beginning 15 October; and Old English Texts (Paper B2) on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 17 October. He will continue to supervise B.Litt. student M.E. Griffiths.
17 October 1935 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
18 October 1935 In the evening, Tolkien attends a dinner of The Society hosted by R.W. Chapman at Oriel College, Oxford. Fifteen members are present. Chapman speaks about Oxford and Cambridge.
Autumn 1935 *A.H. Smith, on behalf of the Early English Text Society, invites Tolkien to prepare an edition of the Cambridge manuscript of the Ancrene Riwle (MS CCCC 402). Tolkien indicates that he is interested, but will have to rely on the assistance of Elaine Griffiths. He is given until the end of the year to reply formally.
24 October 1935 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library.
1 November 1935 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
28 November 1935 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library.
29 November 1935 Tolkien and C.T. Onions examine E.V. Williams of Jesus College viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis, The Phonology and Accidence of the O.E. Glosses in MS Cotton Vespasian A.1 (Vespasian Psalter), at 2.30 p.m. in the Examination Schools.
30 November 1935 Tolkien and Onions sign their report (written by Tolkien) on the examination of E.V. Williams.
4 December 1935 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.
6 December 1935 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. – He possibly attends a meeting of the Council for Comparative Philology at 5.15 p.m. in the Delegates Room of the Clarendon Building.
7 December 1935 Michaelmas Full Term ends.
11 December 1935 The Early English Text Society Committee decides that all except the Latin texts of the Ancrene Riwle are to be printed in EETS editions with the capitals and punctuation of the original.
Christmas 1935 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes a four-page letter to ‘My dear children’ (Christopher and Priscilla), dated 24 December. He comments on the cold weather, on the difficulty of the North Polar Bear in returning home from a visit to the Polar Cubs, and on giving his elves magic sparkler spears to frighten the goblins if they should reappear. He sends love to all the children and to Priscilla’s bears, and hopes that they will enjoy the pantomime they are going to see. The letter is interspersed with small illustrations. – Tolkien spends almost the whole of the Christmas vacation until 4 January, except Christmas Day itself, putting into shape the proofs of Seinte Iuliene on behalf of Simonne d’Ardenne, working against a deadline as the work must be printed by a fixed date.
Late December 1935 Mabel Day, Secretary of the Early English Text Society, writes to Tolkien, asking him to confirm his interest in preparing an edition of the Ancrene Riwle (Ancrene Wisse).
?1936–?1937 In 1936 (possibly early to mid-1936) or early 1937, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis agree that there are too few stories of the kind they like to read, and that they will try to write some themselves. They further agree that Lewis should write a ‘thriller’ based on ‘space-travel’, and Tolkien one on ‘time-travel’, with each leading to the discovery of Myth. See note. The effort by Lewis will result in his Out of the Silent Planet, finished by September 1937. Tolkien on his part draws upon his still developing mythology, and upon a dream he has had since early childhood, of a great wave coming out of the sea and towering over the land: his ‘Atlantis-haunting’ (*Atlantis). He produces, first, a brief outline for the story of Atalantë (*Númenor), an island created as a gift to Men who aided in the defeat of the evil Morgoth, but engulfed by the sea when the Númenóreans dare to assail the land of the Gods. Tolkien follows this with a full narrative in manuscript, hastily written and much corrected in the course of composition, and that in turn with a more finished manuscript with the title (added later) The Last Tale: The Fall of Númenor, and with an amanuensis typescript.
After the sketch and first version of *The Fall of Númenor, but contemporary with the second and intimately connected, Tolkien also begins to work on *The Lost Road, ‘of which the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called Númenor, the Land in the West’ (letter to Christopher Bretherton, 16 July 1964, Letters, p. 347). He writes two chapters of The Lost Road, introducing a father and son who are to appear and reappear in different phases of Germanic and Celtic legend, and then nearly two chapters of the Númenórean episode before deciding that this should come last. He makes rough notes of what might be included in the intervening parts, but does not write them except for a fragment of an Anglo-Saxon episode which includes prose and alliterative versions of the legend of King Sheave. By autumn 1937, however, he abandons The Lost Road altogether, while The Fall of Númenor will evolve ultimately into the *Akallabêth. – It is probably in association with The Lost Road that Tolkien rewrites his poem The Nameless Land (first composed in May 1924), entitling it Ælfwine’s Song Calling upon Eärendel and The Song of Ælfwine (on Seeing the Uprising of Eärendel).
1936 Two poems by Tolkien, The Shadow Man (see *Shadow-Bride) and *Noel, are published in the 1936 Annual of Our Lady’s School, Abingdon (near Oxford). – Thirteen poems by Tolkien written for the amusement of students at Leeds are published, without his knowledge, in *Songs for the Philologists, a booklet privately printed by students in the Department of English of University College, London. These are: From One to Five; Syx Mynet; Ruddoc Hana; Ides Ælfscyne; Bagme Bloma; Eadig Beo Þu!; Ofer Widne Garsecg; La, Huru; I Sat upon a Bench; Natura Apis; The Root of the Boot (revision of Pēro & Pōdex, later *The Stone Troll), Frenchmen Froth; and Lit’ and Lang’. Some are printed with errors, or altered to remove references to Leeds. They had been provided by A.H. Smith, who had been a student of Tolkien at Leeds. See note.
?By early 1936 Tolkien offers his Modern English translation of Pearl to the London publisher J.M. Dent. It is not accepted, but is seen by Guy Pocock, who in 1936 joins the staff of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and recommends that part of the translation be read on radio.
?Early 1936 Tolkien is asked by the publisher George Allen & Unwin if he would be interested in producing a revised edition of John R. Clark Hall’s Modern English translation of Beowulf and The Fight at Finnesburg. He replies that he does not have time to spare, but suggests that Elaine Griffiths is qualified to undertake the work and offers to read what she produces and to write a preface or introduction. *Susan Dagnall, a member of the Allen & Unwin staff who had been a student in the English School at Oxford, is sent to discuss the project with Griffiths and probably also with Tolkien. While there Dagnall learns of the existence of The Hobbit and borrows a typescript. See note. Upon reading The Hobbit she urges Tolkien to finish the book and to submit it for publication. Tolkien agrees to do so. Returning to the story at the point he seems to have left off some three years earlier, he writes ‘Not at Home’, originally as Chapter 14, and the first part of ‘The Gathering of the Clouds’ (published Chapter 15), but then decides that the structure of the story would be improved if ‘Not at Home’ preceded ‘Fire and Water’. In the course of several months, he works out the remaining text in a new manuscript.
5 January 1936 Tolkien writes to Mabel Day of the Early English Text Society. He apologizes for not having given a firm decision about Ancrene Wisse by 31 December. He explains that Elaine Griffiths, on whose assistance he relies and who has been preparing a diplomatic transcription of MS CCCC 402 and a complete index and glossary, had to go home early in