"J.R.R. Tolkien - The History of Middle-Earth - 12" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

reached a remarkably finished form, though in many respects
far different from the published Appendices, at a much earlier
date than I had supposed: in the period (as I judge) immediately
following my father's writing of the last chapter of The Lord of
the Rings in 1948. There is indeed a total absence in these texts
of indications of external date; but it can be seen from many
points that when they were written the narrative was not yet in
final form, and equally clearly that they in fact preceded my
father's return to the First Age at the beginning of the 1950s,
as described in the Foreword to The War of the Jewels. A major
upheaval in the historical-linguistic structure was still to come:

the abandonment of their own tongue by the Noldor returning
out of the West and their adoption of the Sindarin of Middle-
earth.

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In my account I have of course concentrated on these early
forms, which belong so evidently, in manner and air, with the
narrative itself. I have little doubt that my father had long con-
templated such a supplement and accompaniment to The Lord
of the Rings, regarding it as an essential element in the whole;
and I have found it impossible to show in any satisfactory way
how he conceived it at that time without setting out the early
texts in full, although this naturally entails the recital, especially
in the case of the history of Arnor and Gondor, of much that is
known from its survival in the published versions of the Appen-
dices. I have excluded the Appendix E ('Writing and Spelling'),
but I have included the Prologue; and I have introduced into
this part of the book an account of the origin and development
of the Akallabeth, since the evolution of the chronological
structure of the Second Age was closely related to my father's
original formalised computation of the dates of the Numenor-
ean kings.
Following this part I have given three essays written during
his last years; and also some brief writings that appear to derive
from the last years of his life, primarily concerned with or
arising from the question whether Glorfindel of Rivendell and
Glorfindel of Gondolin were one and the same. These late writ-
ings are notable for the many wholly new elements that entered
the 'legendarium'; and also for the number of departures from
earlier work on the Matter of the Elder Days. It may be sug-
gested that whereas my father set great store by consistency at
all points with The Lord of the Rings and the Appendices, so
little concerning the First Age had appeared in print that he was
under far less constraint. I am inclined to think, however, that
the primary explanation of these differences lies rather in his
writing largely from memory. The histories of the First Age