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

in medieval English language and literature or post-Chaucerian literature. He has been given a free hand to do so, and in turn gives Tolkien a free hand to develop the linguistic side of the school. Gordon will later recall that Tolkien began with only five linguistic specialists out of more than sixty honour students of the second and third years. – The University of Leeds Calendar for 1920–1 lists several lectures or classes to take place during the year for which Tolkien may have responsibility: History of English Language to the Close of the Fourteenth Century, and the special study of West Saxon Texts and the Language of Chaucer, on Mondays and Fridays at 3.00 p.m. and Thursdays at 11.30 a.m.; Old English Verse with a special study of Beowulf, The Fight at Finnesburg, Widsith, Waldere, and Deor’s Lament on Mondays at 10.00 a.m.; The History of Modern English: Old and Middle English Texts on Wednesdays at 10.00 a.m.; Old and Middle English Dialects on Fridays at 12.00 noon; Gothic on Tuesdays at 2.00 p.m.; Early English Literature on Mondays at 12.00 noon; and Chaucer, weekly at an hour to be arranged. Tolkien might also be responsible for the first few lectures in an introductory course on English Literature which begins with the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the Second Shepherd’s Play, Everyman, and Morte d’Arthur, and then moves on to Shakespeare, etc., Mondays and Wednesdays at 11.00 a.m. A Third Year Essay Class is also offered, involving discussions following upon papers read by students to the class, and chiefly concerned with Early English Literature and Civilization, weekly at an hour to be arranged; and there are weekly tutorial groups. – While at Leeds Tolkien will produce various duplicated or mimeographed pages to give to his students. (He will later use spare copies of some of these to write notes and drafts.) The topics of such pages include the Ancrene Riwle (October 1920); Phonology, and the Grammar of Layamon’s Brut (November 1920); Kentish Dialect (Middle English) (27 January 1923); and the Development of Old English to Middle English (14 October 1923).

      22 October 1920 Ronald and Edith Tolkien’s second child, Michael Hilary Reuel Tolkien, is born at home in Oxford. His godparents are Monsignor Augustin Emery, the priest the Tolkiens knew at Great Haywood, and Sister Mary Michael of the Sisters of Mercy in Hull, whom Tolkien met when she visited him in hospital.

      3 November 1920 As reported in the London Gazette for 2 November, Tolkien officially relinquishes his army commission as of this date, retaining the rank of lieutenant.

      21 December 1920 Term ends at Leeds.

      Christmas 1920 The Tolkien family spend Christmas in Oxford. John, now three years old, asks his father what Father Christmas is like, and where he lives. Tolkien responds by writing a letter to John as from Father Christmas, the first in a series (the *‘Father Christmas’ letters) which will continue until 1943. A double picture of Father Christmas trudging through a snow storm, and the house in which Father Christmas lives, accompanies the letter, enclosed in an envelope addressed with decorative writing and with a painted ‘North Pole’ stamp and postmark.

      ?End of 1920 Tolkien notes in a résumé of the year 1920 that ‘the glossary [A Middle English Vocabulary] hardly got touched again’ (quoted by Christopher Tolkien in private correspondence).

1921

      ?1921 Tolkien writes the first of at least five texts of the Qenya poem ultimately titled *Nieninque.

      ?1921–?1924 Tolkien begins a typescript of his essay The Kalevala (*On ‘The Kalevala’ or Land of Heroes, read to Oxford societies in November 1914 and February 1915), but leaves it unfinished after nineteen pages, probably close to the end. He makes minor changes to the text throughout and reworks some sections. It is only in this typescript that, after referring to the Kalevala as ‘mythological ballads’ full of a ‘primitive undergrowth’ now cut away and reduced in other European literature, he adds: ‘I would that we had more of it left – something of the same sort that belonged to the English.’ He probably makes this typescript in preparation for still another reading of the paper, perhaps near Christmas: at one point he refers to ‘our present holiday mood’ (Tolkien Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford).

      ?1921–summer 1924 Tolkien begins or continues work on the first version of *The Lay of the Children of Húrin, the story of Túrin Turambar, a long work in alliterative verse (cf. entry for Summer–autumn 1919). He begins a first version in manuscript and emends it; he also makes and emends a typescript, possibly in stages as the manuscript progresses. The manuscript has no title, but the typescript is called The Golden Dragon, changed to Túrin Son of Húrin & Glórund the Dragon. By summer 1924 Tolkien will have written 2201 lines but covered only half the story of Túrin. – During this period he also writes an index of names in the poem (*‘Index of Names for The Lay of the Children of Húrin’).

      After 3 January 1921 Tolkien draws up a synoptic table of the varieties of the Alphabet of Rúmil he has used in his diary. During January he will also draw up another table of this alphabet, with the title ‘Gondolic Script’.

      8 January 1921 By now, Tolkien has been consulted regarding a proposed series of Middle English texts designed for teaching. He is strongly in favour of normalization of texts, that is, making them consistent in spelling, etc., while Kenneth Sisam and David Nichol Smith are just as strongly opposed.

      11 January 1921 Term begins at Leeds.

      18 January 1921 Kenneth Sisam suggests to the authorities of the Oxford University Press that an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for students is badly needed.

      End of January 1921 Tolkien is offered the De Beers Chair in Cape Town. He decides not to accept because Edith and baby Michael are not fit to travel, and he does not want to be separated from his family.

      12 February 1921 Tolkien hands over to John Johnson, Assistant Secretary to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press, material for A Middle English Vocabulary. Johnson asks his opinion of a report made by Kenneth Sisam which argues firmly against normalization in the proposed Middle English text series.

      14 February 1921 Tolkien writes to John Johnson from St Michael’s Road, Leeds, enclosing a revised slip for the glossary. Although he could write an essay on the ethics and objects of normalization, which he supports at least for the sake of students whose approach to a text is literary, Tolkien feels that ‘before even poking my nose into other matters I must knock down this molehill glossary (grown into a mountain by accumulated domestic distractions)’. He remarks however, surely with his own glossary for Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose in mind, that in non-normalized texts most of the trouble ‘then falls on the “glossarist”, who spends endless time (and space) recording forms that could be eliminated and still leave the printed text perfectly Middle English (and intelligible to the scribes and editors if resuscitated)’ (Oxford University Press archives). But by mid-August he will have agreed that normalization of the text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is ill-advised.

      March 1921 Tolkien finds furnished rooms to let for himself, Edith, and their sons at 5 Holly Bank, Leeds, into which they will move in April. The property is owned by a Miss Moseley, a niece of Cardinal Newman. See note.

      16 March 1921 Tolkien is appointed a member of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

      23 March 1921 Term ends at Leeds.

      21 April 1921 Term begins at Leeds.

      ?Late April 1921 Following the Leeds spring vacation, Tolkien and his family move into 5 Holly Bank. Jennie Grove moves to Birmingham.

      Early May 1921 Oxford University Press sends Tolkien corrected page proofs of Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose.

      25 May 1921 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

      2 July 1921 Term ends at Leeds.

      ?August