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1924

?1924–?1936 Tolkien writes out a declensional paradigm for entu, ensi, enta in his invented language Qenya.

?1924–1925 Tolkien begins to make an alliterative translation of Beowulf. Probably while still at Leeds he also works on a prose translation of that poem (apparently complete by spring 1926; see entry for ?26 April 1926).

1924 Tolkien revises his poem The Forest Walker (first composed 25–6 August 1916). – He retouches his poem The Shores of Faëry (first composed in July 1915) and possibly makes a new version in typescript. – He rewrites the penultimate verse of his poem Light as Leaf on Lindentree, and to precede it adds fifteen lines of alliterative verse. At the time of this writing or soon after, he inserts the poem and most of the alliterative lines into The Lay of the Children of Húrin. – Possibly at this time he revises his poem The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star (first composed in September 1914). – He inscribes the date ‘1924’ in his copy of A Glossary of Mediaeval Welsh Law Based upon the Black Book of Chirk by Timothy Lewis (Manchester, 1913).

5 January 1924 Tolkien returns corrected proofs of the first twenty-one pages of text of the Clarendon Chaucer. He has found only three misprints but has marked alterations to Skeat to which Kenneth Sisam had agreed, and justifies other changes he has made, especially in regard to punctuation. Tolkien also makes some queries about the setting of the glossary in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and asks if at some time Oxford University Press would be interested in publishing an Introduction to German Philology he would prepare.

8 January 1924 Kenneth Sisam writes to Tolkien, agreeing with most of the changes he has made to the first pages of proofs of the Clarendon Chaucer, but mainly on grounds of cost hopes that Tolkien will limit changes to punctuation. He gives him some advice about the glossary to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and expresses interest in an Introduction to German Philology if it were not too long or too unreadable.

10 January 1924 Term begins at Leeds.

14 January 1924 Tolkien writes to R.W. Chambers, thanking him for a copy of his inaugural lecture as Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at University College, London, ‘Concerning Great Teachers of the English Language’, which Tolkien has enjoyed reading. He has only just received it ‘a day or two ago’, as it was ‘not forwarded while I was away’ (reproduced in Caroline Chabot, ‘Raymond Wilson Chambers (1874–1942)’, Moreana 24, no. 93 (February 1987), p. 80).

15 January 1924 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

Mid-January 1924 Michael Tolkien is ill with appendicitis, but miraculously recovers on the eve of an operation.

1 February 1924 Tolkien sends Kenneth Sisam more corrected proofs of the Clarendon Chaucer text, with as little alteration as possible. He thanks Sisam for two extra copies of proofs of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for specimens of its glossary printed in two different ways, and for a copy of Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century, edited by Carleton Brown. – By now, the Tolkiens have found a new maid.

26 February 1924 Kenneth Sisam writes to George S. Gordon that he is alarmed at the slow progress of the Clarendon Chaucer. Tolkien is carrying on with the text, but there is still the glossary to complete, and he is also still occupied with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Sisam asks Gordon for the introduction and notes he was to provide. He has heard from E.V. Gordon that he too is worried about the progress of Sir Gawain. On 28 February George S. Gordon will reply to Sisam in Tolkien’s defence.

5 March 1924 Kenneth Sisam writes to Tolkien that he is patiently expecting the Clarendon Chaucer, and asks him to check some corrections in A Middle English Vocabulary, presumably for the 1924 reprint.

17 March 1924 Tolkien and his family move to a three-storey house they have purchased at 2 Darnley Road, West Park, in the outskirts of Leeds with open fields nearby. – Here, when his son John cannot sleep, Tolkien will sit on his bed and tell him stories. These include a tale of ‘Carrots’, a boy with red hair who climbs into a cuckoo clock and has a series of adventures. Tolkien seems not to have written this down, nor indeed most of the stories he tells his children. An exception is The Orgog, the strange, convoluted tale of an odd creature travelling through a fantastic landscape. A watercolour by Tolkien, A Shop on the Edge of the Hills of Fairy Land (Artist and Illustrator, fig. 71), later inscribed ‘Drawn for John, Darnley Road, Leeds 1924’, seems to relate to The Orgog, but does not illustrate the part of the story that survives.

20 March 1924 Term ends at Leeds.

21 March 1924 Kenneth Sisam writes to David Nichol Smith, complaining that Tolkien is holding up not only the Clarendon Chaucer but the edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with E.V. Gordon, and that this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue.

24 April 1924 Term begins at Leeds.

May 1924 Tolkien writes a poem, *The Nameless Land, at his home in Darnley Road, inspired by reading the Middle English poem Pearl for examination papers. – Three of Tolkien’s poems are published in the anthology Leeds University Verse 1914–24, compiled and edited by the English School Association, Leeds: The Lonely Isle (composed in June 1916); The Princess Ní (composed in July 1915); and *An Evening in Tavrobel, a revision of Two Eves in Tavrobel (composed in July 1916).

15 May 1924 George S. Gordon informs Kenneth Sisam that Tolkien has agreed to retire from the Clarendon Chaucer. (In the event, Tolkien does not retire, or no replacement for him is found. He will be recorded as still at work on the project in October 1924.)

20 May 1924 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

12 June 1924 English Final Honour School Examinations begin at Oxford; Tolkien is an external examiner. Other examiners are H.F.B. Brett-Smith, H.C. Wyld, and Oliver Elton. There are ninety candidates. The examiners’ statement of results will be dated 11 July 1924. Later in the year the examiners’ report will note that ‘the general impression conveyed by the papers was that many of the candidates had neglected the linguistic part of the work until towards the end of their time, in the belief that they could “get it up” hurriedly in a few weeks’, an impression confirmed in the viva voce examinations (Oxford University Archives FA 4/10/2/3).

17 June 1924 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

?Summer 1924–early 1925 Tolkien adds another 75 lines to the first version of The Lay of Children of Húrin. Now or possibly while still working on the first version, he begins a second, expanded version, at first called Túrin, changed to The Children of Húrin. Again he works both in manuscript and typescript, with revisions and emendations. By summer 1925, after writing 817 lines, he leaves the second version unfinished. – Tolkien develops various elements from the Lay into an independent poem, originally untitled (‘The high summer / waned to autumn’). Each of three versions is much developed from its predecessor; the second version is entitled Storm over Narog, and the third Winter Comes to Nargothrond. – In another untitled poem (‘With the seething sea || Sirion’s waters’), Tolkien develops a section from The Lay of the Children of Húrin describing the river Sirion meeting the sea.

5 July 1924 Term ends at Leeds.

16 July 1924 Tolkien’s appointment to a new Professorship of English Language from 1 October 1924 is confirmed at a meeting of the University of Leeds Council. By virtue of this appointment he becomes a member of the University Senate. His annual salary is now £800.

c. 20 July 1924 Tolkien dines at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford with George S. Gordon and three men from Canada: R.S. Knox and Herbert Davis, both former lecturers in the Leeds English School, and E.J. Pratt, who will become one of Canada’s best-known poets. Knox will recall that during the evening Gordon played the piano, leading the others in song. – Tolkien possibly dines at Gordon’s house a day or two later, again with the visitors from Canada.

21 August 1924 Tolkien retouches his poem The Trumpets of Faery (originally composed in July–August 1915) and gives it a new title, The Horns of the Host of Doriath.

1 October 1924 Term begins at Leeds. Tolkien is now Professor of English Language.

Leeds academic year 1924–1925 The University of Leeds Calendar for 1924–5 lists several lectures or classes for which Tolkien may have responsibility; his application for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (25 June 1925) will indicate courses he taught at Leeds during this academic year, including: History of English on Mondays and Wednesdays at 12.00 noon; Introduction to Germanic Philology on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m.; Essays and Discussions on Fridays from 9.30 to 11.00 a.m.; Linguistic Study of Old and Middle English Texts on Fridays at 11.00 a.m.; Old Icelandic (Second Year) on Fridays at 2.00 p.m.; and Medieval Welsh, an optional subject, at a time to be arranged with Tolkien. He also teaches one or more of the following: Old and Middle English Readers on Mondays at 10.00 a.m.; either Middle English Texts (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) or Chaucer on Thursdays at 12.00 noon; and either Early English Literature or Middle English Texts (Layamon’s Brut: Selections) on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. He conducts as well a voluntary reading class for the study of additional Old and Middle English texts, on Fridays at 12.00 noon; this attracts more than fifteen students, not all from the linguistic side of the English department.

3 October 1924 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Senate of the University of Leeds.

21 October 1924 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Arts at Leeds.

22 October 1924 Tolkien works on the glossary for the Clarendon Chaucer.

23 October 1924 Tolkien writes to thank Kenneth Sisam for sending a proof of the frontispiece for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and two sets of proofs of the Clarendon Chaucer together with comments by George S. Gordon. He promises to work on the Chaucer in any available ‘cracks’ of free time.

5 November 1924 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Senate of the University of Leeds. He is appointed to the Library Committee.

16 November 1924 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Senate of the University of Leeds.

21 November 1924 Ronald and Edith Tolkien’s third child, Christopher Reuel Tolkien, is born at home in Leeds. His godparents are Wilfred R. Childe, Lecturer in the Leeds English School, and Mrs E.M. Spilmont, apparently the former Miss Moseley from whom Tolkien had rented 5 Holly Bank in Leeds.

Early December 1924 Tolkien and at least some of his family are ill. He informs Kenneth Sisam that this has delayed his work on the Clarendon Chaucer.

5 December 1924 Kenneth Sisam writes to Tolkien, asking to have the glossary for the Clarendon Chaucer by 31 December 1924, and the notes by 31 January 1925. He advises Tolkien that the book cannot stand the cost of a long glossary, and that it is not aimed at readers interested in philology.

8 December 1924 George S. Gordon informs Kenneth Sisam that Tolkien has sent him the manuscript of his glossary for the Clarendon Chaucer, with a preface, for Gordon to examine. – Tolkien attends a meeting of the Senate of the University of Leeds.

20 December 1924 Term ends at Leeds.

22 December 1924 George S. Gordon sends with approval to Kenneth Sisam the manuscript of Tolkien’s glossary and preface for the Clarendon Chaucer.

23 December 1924 Kenneth Sisam writes to George S. Gordon. Tolkien has been warned about the cost of excess proof correction. He will have to pay this himself if he makes as many corrections to the proofs of the Clarendon Chaucer as he did to those of A Middle English Vocabulary. – Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes two short letters to his sons John and Michael. Among other things, he is bringing John a station, and Michael an engine (the boys are model train enthusiasts).