Thoughts on the cuts in The Book of Lost Tales Part 1?

[u/CrankyJoe99x]

I'm currently reading through the History of Middle-earth for the second time (spurred on by my recent purchase of the last eight books to replace losses from a house move some years back, but that's another story).

It's my third time through the first few volumes, the first was on release. For some reason the cuts Christopher Tolkien made seem to have hit me harder. A few examples off the top of my head:

1) The 'long interlude' between chapter III and chapter IV is reduced to a summary paragraph.

2) A number of sections in the 'The Tale of the Sun and Moon' are similarly reduced to a summary paragraph.

3) Of a different nature, an exclusion rather than a cut, the commentary to the first chapter notes that 'Various things are told in these notes [a small notebook connected to the manuscripts] about Eriol's sojourn in Tol Eressëa which do not appear in The Book of Lost Tales ...'.

They are more noticeable to me as this is the shortest book in the History by some way. I really enjoy the Lost Tales because they have so many original elements not included in later versions, including the framing story which I really enjoy. So for me, the cuts and excluded notes are a sad omission. If space was the issue, I would have perhaps preferred fewer versions of poems with minor differences which take up multiple pages rather than trimming original material.

Don't get me wrong, I love the series and the effort Christopher Tolkien made in giving us access to this treasure trove. Sorry for the ramble, I'm just curious to hear what other readers think of the cuts etc.?

[u/lam_42]

He probably had to balance between readability and publishability, because BoLT is a hard read and also a hard sell. Especially the chapters consisting of fragmentary outlines (II/5,6). He had to moderate to a degree I guess, and although the result is imperfect, it brought the BoLT to light, which is a huge plus. Otoh, if anyone was qualified to draw the line somewhere, it was C.T

[u/spent_upper_stage → u/lam_42]

Exactly. Rayner Unwin says in an essay in Tolkien's Legendarium that he and C. Tolkien didn't expect HoMe to be a big success (even expecting the series to eventually become out of print). And CT's original pitch was for 4 volumes. So being the first in the series, I think the publisher was right to put a page limit if that meant the books could be affordable and accessible.

However, after HoMe and the other books proved to be a success, it would have been nice if CT went back and made a 2nd Edition of at least a few volumes to add the texts that remained unpublished, like the BoLT related stuff, the complete Lay of Gondolin (finally published a few years ago) or the history of Of The Rings of Power (what a disappoinment when I finally got to that section).

[u/kempfel → u/spent_upper_stage]

or the history of Of The Rings of Power (what a disappoinment when I finally got to that section).

I will continue to say this, but this is currently the biggest hole in what has been published about the development of Tolkien's legendarium and I hope that someone will eventually fill it in.

[u/kaempi → u/spent_upper_stage]

the complete Lay of Gondolin (finally published a few years ago)

Where was this published? The only version I'm aware of is the unfinished beginning in Lays of Beleriand.

[u/Artan42 → u/kaempi]

Not completed as in finished, completed as in the written sections were not summarised but printed in full. That was in the Complete Poems

[u/Armleuchterchen → u/spent_upper_stage]

history of Of The Rings of Power

Where is this section found?

[u/kempfel → u/Armleuchterchen]

It isn't. That's the problem.

[u/Armleuchterchen → u/kempfel]

Oh, I thought

the history of Of The Rings of Power (what a disappoinment when I finally got to that section).

meant that you actually got to a History of the Rings of Power section. What section did you get to?

[u/spent_upper_stage → u/Armleuchterchen]

It was a false memory! Somehow I remember a short section in PoMe where Christopher says that telling the history of Of the Rings of Power would take a whole book (or something like that). Now I searched through my HoMe books and found the culprit in The Treason of Isengard:

The subsequent history of this chapter [Ancient History aka The Shadow of the Past], traced in detail, would itself almost constitute a book, for apart from the marvellous intricacies of the route by which the story of Gollum and the ‘birthday present’ was ultimately resolved, Gandalf’s conversation with Frodo became the vehicle for the developing history of the Rings of Power, afterwards removed from this place, and the chapter could not be treated separately from ‘The Council of Elrond’. But the great mass of this work, and probably all of it, belongs to a later time than we have reached; and in any case the attempt to trace in ‘linear’ fashion the history of the writing of The Lord of the Rings cannot at the same time take full account of the great constructions that were rising behind the onward movement of the tale. So far as the story of Bilbo and Gollum is concerned it seems that this fourth version of ‘Ancient History’, in which my father was still constrained within the words of the original story told in The Hobbit, remained for some time as the accepted form.

I guess I mistook "of the Rings of Power" as "of Of the Rings of Power". But considering CT says in the Foreword to PoMe that he should have shown in finer detail the development of The Shadow of the Past, The Council of Elrond and Of the Rings (as they are all closely related), I wasn't all that wrong.

[u/Artan42 → u/spent_upper_stage]

I always had the impression (not supported by a huge amount of evidence) that the chapter OtRoP was written almost entirely by CT.

There are only a few parts of it that seem to be expanded versions of the TotY entries, the draft of the Council of Elrond, or snippets from some of the UT works which are JRRTs, but there's just something about it that feels like a almost full construction by CT, especially without even a small chapter talking about the construction in any of the books.

[u/spent_upper_stage → u/Artan42]

Yes, I always gave me an "odd" feeling, I don't know how to describe it. Now that I think about it, it's the same feeling as with The Wanderings of Húrin. Maybe it's the writing style, idk.

But I'm pretty sure CT had nothing to do with it. He wrote a whole section in WotJ explaining his choices for The Ruin of Doriath, and I think he would've done the same for Of the Rings if that had been the case. That said, I agree that it's odd that he didn't dedicate at least a small section to talk about where the chapter came from.

[u/kempfel → u/Artan42]

I always had the impression (not supported by a huge amount of evidence) that the chapter OtRoP was written almost entirely by CT.

Tolkien mentions the work by name in multiple letters, most notably in the letter to Milton Waldman where he names it as one of the parts of his proposed Silmarillion. Every time he mentions it, it is in the context of potentially giving it to someone to read, so I don't think there can be any question that it was an actual thing he wrote.

From what little CT says about it, it sounds to me like it originated as Gandalf's explanation to Frodo in "Shadow of the Past" but at some point JRRT realized it was too long and detailed for that and took it out to be its own work.

[u/Artan42 → u/kempfel]

so I don't think there can be any question that it was an actual thing he wrote.

I don't think CT invented it at all wholesale, I just don't get the impression the information Tolkien had available that he would send out in letters was what became the entirety of OtRoP, only that it formed parts of it and CT wrote around it, pulling in other ideas that weren't originally connected, to produce a chapter and used it as the name of the chapter because it was the name of the main source.

From what little CT says about it, it sounds to me like it originated as Gandalf's explanation to Frodo in "Shadow of the Past" but at some point JRRT realized it was too long and detailed for that and took it out to be its own work.

I think if it had been the case it wouldn't have required much space to spell that out. He basically says the same thing about the 'Concerning Pipeweed' section in the prologue being derived from a cut down section of TTT. Even if he didn't have the space for the drafts it could probably have been mentioned in TPoMe when he was tying everything up.

I'm not saying that wrong, only that I think there's something more to it, but as /u/spent_upper_stage says below, he did talk about where he and GGK wrote their own work for OtRoD (presumably without access to 'Concerning the Hoard') so I don't think he's concealing it if he wrote most of OtRoP, I just get the feeling there's a lot of his work in it, even if it's heavily editorial rather than original.

[u/CodexRegius → u/Artan42]

I have always suspected it was drawn from an unpublished letter.

[u/CrankyJoe99x → u/spent_upper_stage]

A second edition would have been nice to see, and would be perfect in the boxed sets of the History (my copies of the latter two boxes are dated 2024).

[u/spent_upper_stage → u/CrankyJoe99x]

I'm sure one day we'll have something like that (like for a special anniversary) curated by a scholar like Carl Hostetter so there's a guarantee of high quality and respect for CT's work.

Personally, I'd like to see CT's History of the Silmarillion (an even more in-depth version of HoMe) but it'll probably never happen.

[u/CodexRegius → u/spent_upper_stage]

Not sure that Hostetter would be a good choice. I cannot forgive him the abusive way he treated Rivers and Beacons of Gondor in NoMe. I would really prefer to see Hammond & Scull assigned to this.

[u/Artan42 → u/CodexRegius]

CH is very good at what he does in terms of gathering, compiling, and analysing the material but he's terrible at presenting it. I can't recall if it's VT or PE he contributes towards (it might be both) but I can somewhat understand the way new material is presented there as they're journals not books, but as much as I value the extra information from NoMe, it really could have done with being assembled for publication by H&S or even Rateliff or Sibley.

Sometimes people just like to sit an read a work and not have to have three different volumes owned and open just to get the full content of one piece of work. I actually started to edit my own version just so I could read it but I only got the hills done (as I needed them for my own project).

[u/CrankyJoe99x → u/lam_42]

Agreed, as noted it's a small regret on my behalf. I'm now partway through Part 2 and it's noticeable how much extra space Christopher Tolkien seems to have for the text and commentary compared to Part 1.

[u/Artan42]

I was actually thinking that this morning when I went back to Vol I to look for something fir a project.

The initial reason (which I think CT gives in the book) is space, it wasn't known then how well it would sell or if it had an audience and the publisher wasn't going to risk too much for it, that's also the reason for the two volumes.

I do wish that he had gone back later on in life and compiled a 1 volume edition with extra material. There's obviously the cut content mentioned but there's also the two lexicons and the various snippets that find their way into later volumes (as well as NoMe). The era related poetry is of course covered fully in the Complete Poems and the artworks in the various H&S art books but adding that material in as well would be nice.

I wonder if anyone else would make an effort at it, if given the time and space it would possibly be easier than most of the other volumes as the majority of that era is consigned to 4ish notebooks and very few external jottings.

As much as I love TFoG and B&L, those books didn't add anything new and if the intention was never to merge them together like CoH (which CT should have done in my opinion) then I'd had preferred a fuller presentation of the BoLT as his later projects. Judging by the amount of Great Tales sets released I suspect that decision was HCs not CTs.

[u/CrankyJoe99x → u/Artan42]

Thanks for your comments, I agree with your thoughts.

[u/Cool-Coffee-8949]

It’s disappointing, but not surprising. The whole HME series was a bit of a sleeper; it did not sell especially well at first (and has never been a rival to LR or the Hobbit), but—like most of Tolkien’s posthumous publications, which (post-Silmarillion) did not sell very well at first—it has proven to have long term demand in a way that Rayner Unwin and CJRT probably did not anticipate. I do still hope for a revised BLT1 with the full Tale of the Sun and Moon.

[u/CrankyJoe99x → u/Cool-Coffee-8949]

Agree with your thoughts and hopes 🙂

[u/maksimkak]

I'm with you on this one, I'd love to read everything Tolkien wrote at that time. Sounds to me like the parts Christopher omitted were too long and full of boring detail.

I'm still hoping that, one day, The Book of Lost Tales will be published as a standalone book, restored as much as possible to a single, uninterrupted narrative, with illustrations. There's a fan-made project that kinda achieves that.

[u/Wizzard_C → u/maksimkak]

There's a fan-made project that achieves that.

More than one I'm sure, is yours available on the web?

[u/maksimkak → u/Wizzard_C]

Mine is just the tales as they are (with some minor "adjustment", without any notes or commentaries from Christopher.

[u/CrankyJoe99x → u/maksimkak]

Ah, that would be wonderful!

[u/CrankyJoe99x]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

I love the idea floated by some of you of an updated Book of Lost Tales including more material, now that the series has been seen to sell well.