On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 10:41:42 -0500, John W Kennedy
<snippo>
Post by John W KennedyPost by Paul S. PersonI don't recall anything as definitive as a detailed list of the Red
Book's contents -- except for the description in the Prologue. Where
it entered with the Second Edition (which, IIRC, was the
lightly-emended version JRRT prepared for his USA publishers so that
they could secure a USA copyright, his fans having made that
impossible with the First Edition, IIRC).
Not the fans. Houghton-Mifflin had put imported Allen & Unwin sheets in
American bindings, which violated one of the barbaric provisions of the
then US copyright law.
Thanks for the clarification. That makes sense, in a certain way: the
law (then) was that USA books had to actually be printed in the USA --
a sort of protective tariff for the printing industry, no doubt.
Post by John W KennedyAnd the revisions were not so light. A new Foreword completely replaced
the original, omitting the suggestion that Hobbits are still to be
found in England, if one knows where to look, and that Tolkien had
received his source material from them. I don't know how much this was
because Tolkien changed his mind, and how much because the new Foreword
was written to address the copyright situation, and therefore needed to
acknowledge that the story was Tolkien's invention; the "Red Book"
fiction was incompatible with that. Two more significant changes were
the addition of the one-paragraph summary of the Silmarillion proper at
the beginning of Appendix A (the first edition began with "There were
three unions of the Eldar and the Edail", and the indices, which had
been promised in the First Edition, but could not be created in time to
be printed.
As always, this stuff just gets more and more confusing the further I
get into it.
HOME XII contains the preface to the First Edition (pp 25-26). I guess
ome copying is in order (any tyopes are, of course, my own):
"This tale, which has grown to be almost a history of the great War of
the Ring, is drawn for the most part from the memoirs of the renowned
Hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, as they are preserved in the Red Book of
Westmarch. This chief monument of Hobbit-lore is so called because it
was compiled, repeatedly copied, and enlarged and handed down in the
family of the Fairbairns of Westmarch, descended from that Master
Samwise of whom this tale has much to say.
"I have supplemented the account of the Red Book, in places, with
information derived from the surviving records of Gondor, notably the
Book of the Kings ..."
This could be read as implying that the Fairbairns (and so at least
some Hobbits) still exist, but then, the same could be said of Gondor,
which seems much less likely to have been intended. Note also that
/LOTR/ is here stated /explicitly/ to incorporate materials in
addition to the Red Book. Here we have again the scholarly viewpoint:
these sources are here, those sources are there.
HOME XII p 26 has this note:
"On one of his copies of the First Edition my father wrote besit it:
'This Foreword I should wish very much in any case to cancel.
Confusing (as it does) real personal matters with the "machinery" the
Tale is a serious mistake.'"
The "personal matters" are mostly about how long it took to write. So
JRRT's story is, not that he changed the Forward to comply with USA
copyright law, but that he replaced it because it mixed fancy with
reality in a way he now felt was inappropriate.
Confusing matters is that the Prologue was initially titled "Forward:
Concerning Hobbits", making "Forward" somewhat ambiguous. It is here
that Hobbits are treated as still existing, albeit very hard to find.
I don't think any claim to actually gotten the Red Book from them
(directly) is made, however.
The early versions also has "The Shirking" as the former (no longer
used by Bilbo's time) title of the Head of the House of Took.
"Shirking", of course, is for "Shire-king"; but also a joke, just as
the invention of golf in /TH/ was.
Post by John W KennedyPost by Paul S. PersonI didn't check, but I suspect that the Red Book of Westmarch is
credited as the source of the Appendices, whether the material matches
the statements in the Prologue or not. So, once again, I would suspect
a generic use of the term.
Perhaps this would help: I own a copy of the American Bible Society
edition of the New Testament in Greek (from the mid-60s). If the
scholarly apparatus (footnotes) are ignored, this can be regarded as
"generic", as it is based on various ancient Greek manuscripts,
located in various places, which do not all agree with each other at
each point.
A hypothetical New Testament scholar, when talking about the Greek New
Testament, might well list those manuscripts, their locations, and
their contents, and note the differences when addressing a scholarly
audience; but, when addressing a popular audience, he (or she) would
probably treat it as a single work and omit the details. And that is
what I suspect JRRT is doing with the Red Book: details when he is
being a scholar, generic reference when he is being popular.
Normally, a title like "The Red Book of Westmarch" applies to a unique
manuscript -- more akin to the Codex Sinaiticus than to the Western
Text of Acts. (Tolkien was almost certainly thinking of the Red Book of
Hergest.)
Unless, of course, all versions were collectively referred to that way
by scholars.
Another example: /The Nag Hammadi Library/ contains a translation into
English of each of the works contained in the materials found buried
at (presumably) Nag Hammadi. But the introductory material makes it
plain that there are, generally, three copies of each work (they
actually appear to be of differing quality -- analogous to hardcover,
trade paperback, and mass-market paperback).
Each work, nonetheless, appears exactly once. In at least some cases,
materials from the different copies have been merged to produce the
longest and most complete translated version possible. IIRC, in one
case, "The Gospel of Mary", a version found elsewhere is also used.
That is because /The Nag Hammadi Library/ is intended for a lay
audience, not for scholars.
Editions of this material intended for scholars would, no doubt,
include all the versions of each work, in the original Coptic. With an
abundance of notes. And perhaps a sampling of the materials used to
stiffen the covers, which provide a date for the books by which they
must have been copied out (when they were composed is another story).
--
"Nature must be explained in
her own terms through
the experience of our senses."