The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology

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 1933 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes to his children. The letter is dated 21 December, and the envelope ‘postmarked’ 22 December. Father Christmas tells how goblins invaded his house, and were fought by elves and gnomes and the North Polar Bear as well as himself. Enclosed is a triple illustration in an elaborate frame, depicting Father Christmas awakened by goblins riding on bats, a snowy landscape with the Northern Lights, and the North Polar Bear and gnomes in battle with goblins.

Mid-1930s C.S. Lewis and some of his students meet in his rooms in Magdalen College to read and discuss Beowulf. One of Lewis’s students, E.L. Edmonds, will later recall that Tolkien came quite often to these ‘beer and Beowulf’ evenings. ‘It was very obvious that [Tolkien and Lewis] were great friends – indeed, they were like two young bear cubs sometimes, just happily quipping with one another’ (‘C.S. Lewis, the Teacher’, In Search of C.S. Lewis, (1983), p. 45).

Mid-1930s–end of 1937 Tolkien revises some components of his ‘Silmarillion’ mythology and writes new texts. He does not necessarily finish one work before starting another, and makes changes to previously written texts to conform with new story elements or changed names as they emerge. Works from this period include, in the probable order in which they are begun: the ‘later’ Annals of Beleriand, a fuller and more finished version of the ‘earliest’ Annals; the *Ambarkanta: The Shape of the World, a list of cosmographical words and explanations and a description of the world of the mythology, accompanied by three diagrams and two maps; the ‘later’ Annals of Valinor, a development of the ‘earliest’ Annals; the first version of *The Tale of Years, as an accompaniment to the Annals as they become fuller; the *Lhammas or ‘Account of Tongues’, in three versions (the third entitled Lammasethen), which describes the development and interrelationships of the various Elvish languages and also includes information about the speech of the Valar, Men, and Orcs, with summaries of the history of the Elves and two ‘genealogical tables’, The Tree of Tongues and The Peoples of the Elves; a substantial work on Noldorin phonology, and a five-page exposition of Elvish runes; two brief texts, *The Elvish Alphabets, which describes the Noldorin alphabets of Rúmil and Fëanor and the Runic alphabet of Dairon, and *The ‘Alphabet of Dairon’ which includes more information about runes; the *Ainulindalë, the first retelling of the Creation myth since The Music of the Ainur in The Book of Lost Tales; and the *Quenta Silmarillion, in which the mythology is told as a narrative at much greater length than in the Quenta Noldorinwa and which incorporates much new material. In the latter Tolkien has great difficulty in compressing the tale of Beren and Lúthien which he had told at great length in the Lay of Leithian, and rejects drafts that are disproportionate to the rest of the work; while he is writing another version of this story, he sends a fair copy of the Quenta Silmarillion to George Allen & Unwin to be considered for publication (see entry for 15 November 1937). – Probably contemporary with his work on the Lhammas and the Quenta Silmarillion, Tolkien prepares the *Etymologies (or Beleriandic and Noldorin Names and Words), ‘an etymological dictionary of word-relationships: an alphabetically-arranged list of primary stems, or “bases”, with their derivatives’ (Christopher Tolkien, *The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987), pp. 342–3). This is apparently compiled progressively through the alphabet, but changes are made in the course of composition. Associated with the Etymologies, at the end of this period, Tolkien also explores spelling in his Elvish languages.

1934 (#ulink_256693f0-913f-5dc4-8f86-4543c690451c)

c. 1934–1935 Tolkien writes a review of the Devonshire volumes published by the English Place-Name Society in 1931 and 1932. This also mentions the Northampton and Surrey volumes, which appeared in 1933 and 1934, but not the 1935 Essex volume. In the event, the review is never published.

14 January 1934 Hilary Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Waldere and Deor’s Lament, together with the Old Norse Völundarkviða, on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 16 January; and The Historical and Legendary Traditions in Beowulf and Other Old English Poems (continued) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 16 January. Tolkien will continue to supervise B.Litt. students J.E. Blomfield, A.F. Colborn, M.E. Griffiths, and E.O.G. Turville-Petre.

18 January 1934 Tolkien’s poem Looney is published in the Oxford Magazine for 18 January 1934.

19 January 1934 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Committee for Comparative Philology at 5.15 p.m. in the Delegates Room of the Clarendon Building. In the absence of the usual chairman, he is asked to take the chair. He is made a member of the Committee for the Nomination of Examiners for the Diploma in Comparative Philology for two years from the beginning of Hilary Term 1934.

25 January 1934 Tolkien chairs an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library.

31 January 1934 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

15 February 1934 Tolkien’s poem The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is published in the Oxford Magazine for 15 February 1934.

21 February 1934 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

23 February 1934 By this date Priscilla Tolkien has been ill for five weeks, and doctors have been unable to diagnose the cause. Tolkien’s own and his family’s ill health in the past few years, with consequent doctors’ bills, and the expense of sending his sons to school, have made it difficult for him to make ends meet, even by undertaking tasks such as marking examination papers.

1 March 1934 Tolkien certifies that E.O.G. Turville-Petre has completed course work towards his B.Litt.

9 March 1934 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien and E.V. Gordon examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of E.O.G. Turville-Petre, An Edition of Víga-Glúms Saga from the Manuscripts, with Introduction and Notes.

10 March 1934 Hilary Full Term ends.

12 March 1934 First Public Examination (Pass Moderations) begins. Tolkien is an moderator.

25 March 1934 Tolkien’s poem Firiel is published in the Chronicle of the Convents of the Sacred Heart 4 (1934).

26 March 1934 Tolkien goes to C.S. Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College at 4.00 p.m. After tea, he and the Lewis brothers read Wagner’s Die Walküre, Warren in English, the others in German. See note. – Soon after 6.00 p.m. Tolkien goes home, but later meets the Lewises at the Eastgate Hotel for dinner. They then return to Magdalen to finish the reading and to drink whiskey. The reading leads to a discussion about Wotan, and to long and interesting conversation on religion. The meeting breaks up at about 11.30 p.m.

28 March 1934 L.R. Farnell dies.

18 April 1934 Elaine Griffiths, the B.Litt. student working on aspects of the Cambridge manuscript of the Ancrene Riwle (Ancrene Wisse), writes to Tolkien, sending references in the manuscript for which he had asked. By now Tolkien has been preparing an edition of Ancrene Wisse, and Griffiths is his de facto assistant.

22 April 1934 Trinity Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Old English Verse (for those beginning the Honour Course) on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 24 April; Völundarkviða, Atlakviða, and Atlamál on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools; and The Fight at Finnesburg (continued; probably a further continuation of The Historical and Legendary Traditions in Beowulf and Other Old English Poems) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 24 April. (Thus announced in the Oxford University Gazette, without correction for the listing of two lectures scheduled for Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m.) Tolkien will continue to supervise B.Litt. students J.E. Blomfield and M.E. Griffiths.

25 April 1934 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

3 May 1934 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library.

11 May 1934 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien and *M.R. Ridley examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of Mary M. McEldowney of the Society of Oxford Home-Students, The Fairy Tales and Fantasies of George MacDonald.

26 May 1934 Tolkien and E.V. Gordon examine E.O.G. Turville-Petre of Christ Church viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis, An Edition of Víga-Glúms Saga from the Manuscripts, with Introduction and Notes, at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools.

28 May 1934 Tolkien and E.V. Gordon sign their report (written by Tolkien) on the examination of E.O.G. Turville-Petre.

June 1934 The second part of Tolkien’s essay Sigelwara Land is published in Medium Ævum for June 1934.

7 June 1934 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. – English Final Honour School Examinations begin.

12 June 1934 Tolkien and M.R. Ridley examine Mary M. McEldowney of the Society of Oxford Home-Students viva voce on her B.Litt. thesis, The Fairy Tales and Fantasies of George MacDonald, at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools. Later they sign their report of the examination.

15 June 1934 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting at 3.30 p.m. – Tolkien attends a meeting of the Committee for Comparative Philology at 5.15 p.m. in the Delegates Room of the Clarendon Building. – Tolkien also attends a Pembroke College meeting.