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1926

?1926–?1930 At some time in this period, Tolkien makes the first ‘Silmarillion’ map, incorporating the much greater geographical detail included in The Lay of the Children of Húrin and the Lay of Leithian (relative to The Book of Lost Tales). It will remain his working map until at least 1932, during which time he will make many additions and emendations. The map is originally only one sheet, but two supplementary sheets extend the area covered to the east and west. – Probably in this period Tolkien translates two portions of the Old Norse poem *Atlakviða into Old English. – For some years after the move to 22 Northmoor Road, a series of Icelandic au pair girls live with the Tolkien family and entertain the boys with tales about trolls. Tolkien himself will continue to tell his children stories, most of which are never written down: some concern the characters Bill Stickers, Major Road Ahead, Timothy Titus, and Tom Bombadil. The latter is inspired by a Dutch doll (i.e. a jointed wooden doll) which belonged to the Tolkien children (according to some sources; according to Biography it belonged to Michael). See note.

1926–1933 Tolkien keeps a diary written in a proto-Fëanorian alphabet (see *Writing systems).

1926 Tolkien writes a poem, Pēro & Pōdex (‘Boot and Bottom’, later *The Stone Troll). – He inscribes ‘1926’ in his copy of Introduction to Early Welsh by John Strachan (Manchester, 1909).

Early 1926 Tolkien writes a prose manuscript of twenty-eight pages entitled ‘Sketch of the Mythology with especial reference to “The Children of Húrin”’ (*Sketch of the Mythology) to explain the background of the poem to R.W. Reynolds. This is the first text to cover the whole of Tolkien’s mythology from the rebellion of Morgoth to the age of Men and ‘the last end of the tales’. The story has advanced since The Book of Lost Tales, apparently (to judge by the lack of intervening texts) only in Tolkien’s mind while he was at Leeds. He will revise the Sketch, in places heavily, between 1926 and 1930.

First part of 1926 Tolkien sends R.W. Reynolds many of his poems, including the unfinished Lay of Leithian and part of The Lay of the Children of Húrin. In August 1926, having received Reynolds’ comments in return, Tolkien will write in his diary: ‘Tinúviel meets with qualified approval [by Reynolds], it is too prolix, but how could I ever cut it down, and the specimen I sent of Túrin with little or none’ (quoted in The Lays of Beleriand, p. 3).

4 January 1926 Tolkien and his family leave their house in Leeds.

7 January 1926 The Tolkiens move to 22 Northmoor Road, Oxford. *Basil Blackwell, the publisher and bookseller, lives next door at no. 20. John and Michael are not able to attend school immediately, as they still have ringworm. After a lengthy and expensive treatment they will attend the Dragon School in Bardwell Road, a few minutes’ walk from Northmoor Road.

13 January 1926 Term begins at Leeds. E.V. Gordon succeeds to Tolkien’s chair, but as the successor to his own readership will not take up office until October 1926, Tolkien will undertake some teaching or lecturing at Leeds during the spring term. His last recorded payment by Leeds will be in April 1926.

17 January 1926 Hilary Full Term begins at Oxford. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Introduction to Germanic Philology on Tuesdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 19 January; Beowulf (Text) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 19 January; and Anglo-Saxon Reader on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 21 January.

Hilary Term 1926 Tolkien founds the Kolbítar (*Societies and clubs), an informal reading club for dons interested in the Icelandic sagas and eddic writings. They will meet regularly and translate sections in turn, the length of the section varying from a paragraph for the least skilled reader, to several pages for Tolkien; and they will discuss over drinks what has been translated. Sometimes they will meet in pubs, but often in the rooms of *John Bryson, at this time a Tutor and Lecturer at Merton College. See note.

5 February 1926 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature at 3.30 p.m. in the Board Room of the Clarendon Building.

4 March 1926 A review-essay by Tolkien, Philology: General Works, is published in *The Year’s Work in English Studies, vol. 5 (for 1924). He discusses some fifteen works (mainly books) at length, and mentions many others in the course of forty pages.

11 March 1926 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature at 3.30 p.m. in the Board Room of the Clarendon Building. He is appointed to a committee to draft a reply to a letter from the Hebdomadal Council on the duties and payments of examiners. He and C.T. Onions are appointed examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of Joseph Reeves, a non-collegiate student, An Edition of the Vernon Text of the Ancrene Riwle and a Study of Its Relation to the Other MSS.

13 March 1926 Hilary Full Term ends at Oxford.

24 March 1926 Term ends at Leeds.

21 April 1926 Term begins at Leeds.

25 April 1926 Trinity Full Term begins at Oxford. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Beowulf (Text, continued) on Tuesdays and Fridays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 27 April; Anglo-Saxon Reader (selected extracts) on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 29 April; and Introduction to Germanic Philology on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m., in the Examination Schools, beginning 29 April.

?26 April 1926 Tolkien writes to Kenneth Sisam. He has made a complete Modern English (prose) translation of Beowulf, though not much to his liking, and will send him a specimen. He offers to put it in order if Sisam likes it. In the meantime he encloses his Modern English translation of Pearl, which he has made in spare moments and wonders if it could be published by itself. He is laid up with shingles, so that he does not know if he will be able to lecture this week.

4–12 May 1926 General Strike in support of miners. The miners will stay on strike until 19 November.

?9 May 1926 Tolkien, Edith, and their children visit Kenneth Sisam in the afternoon for tea.

11 May 1926 Tolkien attends a meeting of the English Faculty in the afternoon at Merton College, Oxford. Also present is *C.S. Lewis, recently elected Fellow and Tutor in English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, who will write in his diary:

In to Merton for the ‘English tea’ at 4…. Discussion turned on [*R.F.W.] Fletcher’s proposal to co-ordinate the lecture list with the ordinary course of tutorial work. Everyone agreed, tho’ [George] Gordon spoke of the danger of making the thing too much of ‘an easy running engine which can give no pleasure to anyone except the engineer’. Miss [Margaret Lucy] Lee [tutor in English for the Society of Oxford Home-Students] talked a lot of nonsense about the need for lessons in pronunciation and beginners’ ‘outlines of literature’.

Tolkien managed to get the discussion round to the proposed English Prelim[inary examination, see entry for 9 December 1926]. I had a talk with him afterwards. He is a smooth, pale, fluent little chap – can’t read Spenser because of the forms – thinks the language is the real thing in the school – thinks all literature is written for the amusement of men between thirty and forty…. His pet abomination is the idea of ‘liberal’ studies. Technical hobbies are more in his line. [All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis 1922–1927 (1991), pp. 392–3]

12 May 1926 Tolkien is prevented by ill health from reading a paper on the Elder Edda to the Exeter College Essay Club.

14 May 1926 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature at 3.30 p.m. in the Board Room of the Clarendon Building. He and Joseph Wright are appointed examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of Huntington Brown of University College, Varieties of Pronunciation in the Standard English of the Sixteenth Century (The Vowels of Stressed Syllables).

5 June 1926 Tolkien and Joseph Wright examine Huntington Brown viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis at 11.30 a.m. in the Examination Schools. Tolkien will write out their undated report. See note.

10 June 1926 English Final Honour School Examinations begin.

12 June 1926 Tolkien and C.T. Onions examine Joseph Reeves, a non-collegiate student, viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis, An Edition of the Vernon Text of the Ancrene Riwle and a Study of Its Relation to the Other [Manuscripts], at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools.

16 June 1926 Onions and Tolkien sign their report on the examination of Joseph Reeves.

17 June 1926 Tolkien attends, for the last time, a meeting of the Board of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature at 3.30 p.m. in the Board Room of the Clarendon Building. From Michaelmas Term 1926 he will attend meetings of the newly separate English Faculty Board.

19 June 1926 Trinity Full Term ends at Oxford.

23 June 1926 Encaenia (an annual procession to the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford to hear an oration in Latin, to commemorate founders and benefactors, and to witness the conferring of honorary degrees). During his years at Oxford, Tolkien will usually attend Encaenia, and with his wife (while her health permitted) also the garden party following the ceremonies.

25 June 1926 Tolkien replies to an enquiry from Willard G. Harding, about the word gemowe, which Tolkien has not encountered before.

End of June 1926 Tolkien attends a dinner at Leeds for departing senior members of the faculty.

3 July 1926 Term ends at Leeds.

16 August 1926 Tolkien writes in his diary that he has done ‘a little typing of part of Tinúviel’ (quoted in The Lays of Beleriand, p. 150). This is the first mention of the typescript (by this date already in progress) of the Lay of Leithian, here called in full The Gest of Beren Son of Barahir and Lúthien the Fay Called Tinúviel the Nightingale or The Lay of Leithian, Release from Bondage. The typescript incorporates emendations made on the earlier manuscript and includes further changes. It is not clear if he has done any more work on the poem since he reached line 757, the end of Canto III in September 1925. The manuscript of Canto IV is completed in March 1928.

?Summer 1926 While the Tolkien family are having a picnic on the banks of the Cherwell, Michael trips over willow roots and falls into the river. Tolkien, wearing his best tennis flannels, jumps in to rescue his son. – Summer 1926 is the earliest date, if probably the least likely, among several considered for the moment when Tolkien, in the midst of marking School Certificate examination papers, wrote the opening words of The Hobbit (‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit’). See further, article on *The Hobbit in Reader’s Guide.

October 1926 Tolkien is admitted to a non-stipendiary professorial fellowship at Pembroke College.

17 October 1926 Michaelmas Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures and classes for this term are: the Old English Exodus on Tuesdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 19 October; Gothic on Tuesdays at 5.30 p.m., place to be arranged, beginning 19 October; The Verse of Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 21 October; Old English Philology on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 21 October; Old Icelandic Texts (Class) on Thursdays at 5.30 p.m., place to be arranged, beginning 21 October; King Horn on Fridays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 22 October; and Icelandic Discussion Class on Fridays at 5.30 p.m., place to be arranged, beginning 22 October.

Michaelmas Term 1926 Tolkien is nominated to serve as an examiner in the Honour School of English Language and Literature from Hilary Term 1927 to Hilary Term 1929.

21 October 1926 Tolkien replies to an enquiry from Willard G. Harding about the etymology of sag.

5 November 1926 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. Meetings are usually held in the Board Room of the Clarendon Building, and in this period (when scheduled) at 3.30 p.m. on Fridays. Tolkien is appointed an elector to the Jesus Professorship of Celtic until Michaelmas Term 1928. (He will be reappointed continuously until Michaelmas Term 1963, but only in 1947 will he take part in an election.) – English Faculty Board meetings are always preceded by a meeting of the Applications Committee, which deals with matters concerning research students and presents their decisions for approval by the full Board. See note for 4 November 1927. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien supervisor of Ruth A. Crook of Somerville College, a probationer B.Litt. student who wishes to work on a Middle English subject.

10 November 1926 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

16 November 1926 Tolkien, now a member of the English Faculty Library Committee, attends a special meeting held in the Library, with George S. Gordon, David Nichol Smith, Edith Wardale, and the Librarian. They discuss the mixed response of the colleges to a proposal that there be an annual £1 subscription for use of the Library from undergraduates reading for the School of English.

17 November 1926 Tolkien attends a meeting of the Exeter College Essay Club at 8.30 p.m. in the Rector’s lodgings. He reads a paper on the Elder Edda, postponed from 12 May. According to a report in the Stapeldon Magazine for December 1926, ‘the reader, after sketching the character and historical background of the Edda, described certain of the poems. He also gave a number of translations and readings from the Icelandic which demonstrated the peculiar poetic and musical qualities of the language’ (‘Essay Club’, p. 96).

9 December 1926 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He is appointed, with George S. Gordon, David Nichol Smith, *F.P. Wilson, and Edith Wardale, to a committee to draft a lecture schedule for the academic year 1927–8, to be reported to the Board at the first meeting in Trinity Term 1927. (Tolkien will be re-appointed to this committee until at least 1931.) He is also appointed, with George S. Gordon, H.F.B. Brett-Smith, David Nichol Smith, and Edith Wardale, to a committee to consider the question of a Preliminary Examination in the English School. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien and Gordon examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of *Mary Lascelles of Lady Margaret Hall, Alexander and the Earthly Paradise in Medieval English Literature.

11 December 1926 Michaelmas Full Term ends.

20 December 1926 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes a letter to his sons. He tells how the North Polar Bear turned on the taps for the aurora borealis, producing a splendid display (solar magnetic storms in 1926 are notably strong, producing spectacular auroral displays in many places in the northern hemisphere). Tolkien also sends a picture showing the scene with the lights filling the sky, and an envelope with a stamp and inscription written by the Snow Man, Father Christmas’s gardener.