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1933

?1933–?1936 Tolkien writes a substantial part of a long poem, *The Fall of Arthur. It progresses through several different versions and narrative outlines, but is abandoned unfinished after 954 lines. Tolkien will send one version to his friend R.W. Chambers for comment (see entry for 9 December 1934). See note.

15 January 1933 Hilary Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Elene (continued) and The Vision of the Cross (i.e. The Dream of the Rood) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 17 January; Old English Textual Criticism on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 17 January; Völsunga Saga on Thursdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 19 January; and The Language of the Vespasian Psalter Glosses on Fridays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 20 January.

18 January 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

25 January 1933 C.S. and Warren Lewis are Tolkien’s guests for dinner at high table at Pembroke College. After dinner they retire to the Common Room for dessert and wine, then stand around the fire talking mainly about Samuel Johnson and Anthony Trollope. Tolkien and the Lewis brothers go to C.S. Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College for more conversation until 11.00 p.m., when Tolkien drives Warren most of the way home.

26 January 1933 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library.

30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.

3 February 1933 At an English Faculty Board meeting, in Tolkien’s absence, the Applications Committee reports that it has appointed Tolkien and Kenneth Sisam examiners of the B.Litt. thesis of *N.R. Ker of Magdalen College, A Study of the Additions and Alterations in MSS Bodley 340 and 342.

4 February 1933 C.S. Lewis writes to his friend Arthur Greeves: ‘Since term began [15 January] I have had a delightful time reading a children’s story Tolkien has just written [presumably The Hobbit]…. Whether it is really good (I think it is until the end) is of course another question’ (They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963), p. 449).

9 February 1933 The Oxford Union Society debates the motion ‘that this House will in no circumstance fight for its King and Country’. The motion is carried 275 votes to 153 and is widely discussed in the press.

14 February 1933 Tolkien and Dorothy Everett examine M.E. Carroll of St Hilda’s College viva voce on her B.Litt. thesis, The Phonology of Hampshire Place-Name Forms, at 2.30 p.m. in the Examination Schools. – The Society for the Study of Mediæval Languages and Literature holds its second meeting.

17 February 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting. – He and Dorothy Everett sign their report (written by Tolkien) on the examination of M.E. Carroll.

2 March 1933 Tolkien certifies that S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne has completed course work towards her B.Litt.

8 March 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

10 March 1933 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting.

11 March 1933 Hilary Full Term ends.

16 March 1933 Tolkien writes to Kenneth Sisam that he hopes to see him at his home at Boar’s Hill, Oxford, on 18 March. Tolkien is very pleased because he has been given a complete set of the Oxford English Dictionary. He has been reading the thesis of N.R. Ker and finds it hard going.

21 March 1933 Tolkien and Kenneth Sisam examine N.R. Ker of Magdalen College viva voce on his B.Litt. thesis, A Study of the Additions and Alterations in MSS Bodley 340 and 342, at 2.30 p.m. in the Examination Schools.

c. 25 March 1933 Tolkien and C.S. Lewis discuss the latter’s response to The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas as a work with no background behind the plot. They remark on how the word romance is used to describe works by authors as different as Dumas and William Morris, and agree ‘that for what we meant by romance there must be at least the hint of another world – one must “hear the horns of elfland”’ (C.S. Lewis, 25 March 1933, They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963), p. 452).

April 1933 Tolkien’s name is included at the end of a list of twenty scholars, all of them involved in some manner with education, ‘associat[ing] ourselves with the efforts that are being made to introduce Esperanto as a regular subject of instruction, and to encourage its use in the schools of the world’. This manifesto will be published in The British Esperantist for May 1933 as ‘The Educational Value of Esperanto’.

1 April 1933 In Germany the Nazis begin to persecute the Jews. Jewish businesses will be boycotted – most are soon liquidated – and Jewish lawyers and doctors barred from their professions.

14–17 April 1933 The twenty-fourth British Esperanto Congress is held in Oxford, with headquarters at the Randolph Hotel. Tolkien is one of its patrons, together with the Duke of Connaught, the Mayor of Oxford (Alderman G.H. Brown), Sir Michael Sadler, Professor *G.E.K. Braunholtz, Councillor the Rev. John Carter, the Master of Balliol (Dr. A.D. Lindsay), and the Principal of Ruskin College (A. Barratt Brown).

23 April 1933 Trinity Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Old English Verse Texts (for those beginning the Honour Course) on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 25 April; The Germani on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 25 April; and Prolegomena to the Study of Old English and Old Norse Poetry on Thursdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 27 April. E.O.G. Turville-Petre is to teach a class in Old Norse on behalf of Tolkien.

26 April 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

24 May 1933 The Oxford University Gazette reports that Tolkien has been appointed a Moderator in Literis Graecis et Latinis (Pass Moderations) from the first day of Michaelmas Term 1933 to first day of Michaelmas Term 1934.

12 May 1933 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting.

18 May 1933 Tolkien’s uncle, Thomas Evans Mitton, dies.

8 June 1933 Tolkien chairs an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. – English Final Honour School Examinations begin. Tolkien is chairman of the examiners.

11 June 1933 At a board meeting of Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag (the Icelandic Literary Society), Sigurður Nordal nominates Tolkien as an honorary member.

16 June 1933 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He is appointed to the Committee for the Nomination of Public Examiners in the Honour School of English Language and Literature and in the Pass School, Group B.6, to Hilary Term 1937. – He also attends a Pembroke College meeting.

17 June 1933 Trinity Full Term ends. – The annual general meeting of Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag confirms with applause Tolkien’s honorary membership.

20 June 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

21 June 1933 Encaenia.

26 July 1933 Tolkien and Hugo Dyson entertain the Lewis brothers at dinner in Exeter College. Dyson and Tolkien are in exuberant form, especially Dyson. As it is vacation they dine in the Common Room with various members of Exeter and their guests. Nevill Coghill is among those present. They eat a dinner of cold soup and lobster salad served with cider, then retire to another room to drink sauterne, and to deck chairs in the garden for coffee. After some conversation Tolkien, Dyson, the Lewis brothers, and a clergyman walk to Magdalen College and stroll in the deer park. At about 10.00 p.m. they adjourn to the Magdalen Common Room for drinks. The party breaks up about 10.20.

?End of July 1933 Tolkien and his wife attend Prize Day at the Oratory School, where their son John is a pupil. Also among the attendees are Professor and Mrs Francis de Zulueta and Father Vincent Reade. A paper by the Right Reverend Dom John Chapman, O.S.B., the Abbot of Downside, on Cardinal Newman and the Oxford Movement, is read in Chapman’s absence by Lord FitzAlan, chairman of the School’s Board of Governors, followed by remarks by Lord Rankeillour ‘on the circumstantial difficulties which had militated against the practical success of so many of Cardinal Newman’s admirable projects’, excepting the Oratory School which has had ‘a steady output of achievement’ (‘Prize Day at the Oratory School’, The Tablet, 5 August 1933, p. 175).

?Summer 1933 John Tolkien and his father erect a trellis in front of 20 Northmoor Road to screen their garden from the eyes of passers-by.

?August–early October 1933 Probably during the summer vacation Tolkien begins to write lectures on ‘Beowulf: General Criticism’ which he will give during Michaelmas Term 1933. These may be the work first called Beowulf with Critics and later Beowulf and the Critics (see *Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics). Tolkien will later produce a revised and enlarged version of the lectures, presumably for ‘Beowulf: General Criticism’ as delivered in Michaelmas Term 1934 or 1936.

14 September 1933 While driving with his family to visit relatives in Birmingham, Tolkien passes through Hall Green, formerly the hamlet of Sarehole. He finds that most of the scenery and buildings he remembers from his boyhood have been destroyed or much altered. He will record in his diary that Sarehole had become ‘a huge tram-ridden meaningless suburb where I actually lost my way’ (quoted in Biography, p. 124).

?October 1933 Tolkien submits, probably by invitation, a poem, Firiel (*The Last Ship), for publication in the Chronicle of the Convents of the Sacred Heart, the journal of a Roman Catholic order which has an Oxford branch (established 1929) at 11 Norham Gardens. Firiel dates from the early 1930s, and is possibly written at this time. Tolkien is in close contact with the Oxford convent: Priscilla Tolkien will recall going there for children’s parties in the summer and also at Christmas when her father provided entertainment.

8 October 1933 Michaelmas Full Term begins. Tolkien’s scheduled lectures for this term are: Beowulf: General Criticism on Tuesdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 10 October; The Origins of the English Language on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 10 October; Old English Prose Pieces (Cynewulf and Cyneheard, Ohthere and Wulfstan, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos) on Thursdays at 11.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 12 October; and The Historical and Legendary Traditions in Beowulf and Other Old English Poems on Thursdays and Fridays at 12.00 noon in the Examination Schools, beginning 12 October. He will continue to supervise B.Litt. students A.F. Colborn, L.E. Jones (later L.E. Rogers), and E.O.G. Turville-Petre. See note.

?Michaelmas Term 1933 Edward Tangye Lean having graduated from Oxford, the name of his literary club, ‘The Inklings’, is transferred (not earlier than this term) to an ultimately more famous group of friends which by now has already formed around C.S. Lewis. The new group, informal and of varying composition, will usually meet in a pub, often the Eagle and Child (or ‘Bird and Baby’, see *Oxford and environs) in St Giles’, for an hour or two before lunch on Tuesdays to talk and drink together; and in Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College after dinner on Thursdays, where they will read compositions for the criticism or acclaim of those present, otherwise letting conversation wander where it will. These meetings will become an important part of Tolkien’s life for almost twenty years. See note.

10 October 1933 The future novelist Barbara Pym, then an undergraduate at Oxford, notes in her diary that Tolkien gave an amusing lecture on Beowulf this morning.

11 October 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

19 October 1933 By this date Tolkien, as chairman, has written a six-page report of the examiners in the Honour School for 1933.

20 October 1933 Tolkien attends a special meeting of the Committee on Comparative Philology at 4.15 p.m. in the Music Lecture Room of the Clarendon Building.

27 October 1933 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. He is re-elected to the Library Committee. The report of the examiners in the English Honour School for 1933 (of which Tolkien is chairman) is presented. The Applications Committee has appointed Tolkien supervisor of probationer B.Litt. students J.E. Blomfield (*Joan Elizabeth Turville-Petre) of Somerville College and M.E. Griffiths of the Society of Oxford Home-Students, who are interested in Old English and Middle English philology respectively.

2 November 1933 A member of the Convents of the Sacred Heart in Oxford writes to Tolkien, acknowledging receipt of his poem Firiel.

3 November 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

9 November 1933 Tolkien’s poem Errantry is published in the Oxford Magazine for 9 November 1933.

15 November 1933 The Early English Text Society Committee votes to publish the English, French, and Latin texts of the Ancrene Riwle, edited under the auspices of the Society in conjunction with American scholars.

23 November 1933 Tolkien chairs an English Faculty Library Committee meeting at 2.15 p.m. in the Library. – Later he has tea with the Lewis brothers and an ex-pupil of C.S. Lewis.

28 November 1933 Tolkien completes the application forms for J.E. Blomfield and M.E. Griffiths to be accepted as full B.Litt. students. Blomfield’s thesis is to be The Origins of Old English Orthography, with Special Reference to the Representation of the Spirants, and Griffiths’ thesis is to be Notes and Observations on the Vocabulary of Ancrene Wisse MS CCCC 402.

30 November 1933 Tolkien attends an English Faculty Board meeting. The Applications Committee has accepted J.E. Blomfield and M.E. Griffiths as full B.Litt. students; Tolkien is to continue as their supervisor.

1 December 1933 Tolkien attends a Pembroke College meeting.

2 December 1933 Michaelmas Full Term ends.

Early December 1933 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes a short letter to his children, dated 2 December. He has had ‘a good many letters’ from them.

4 December 1933 Tolkien goes for a walk with C.S. Lewis.

21 December 1933 Tolkien writes to R.W. Chambers, thanking him for a note and conveying best wishes for Christmas and the new year. Either with his letter or separately, he sends Chambers an elaborately calligraphic and illuminated copy of a poem he has written, *Doworst, a satirical account of the vivas at Oxford, written in the style and metre of the fourteenth-century poem Piers Plowman.

Christmas 1933 Tolkien, as ‘Father Christmas’, writes to his children. The letter is dated 21 December, and the envelope ‘postmarked’ 22 December. Father Christmas tells how goblins invaded his house, and were fought by elves and gnomes and the North Polar Bear as well as himself. Enclosed is a triple illustration in an elaborate frame, depicting Father Christmas awakened by goblins riding on bats, a snowy landscape with the Northern Lights, and the North Polar Bear and gnomes in battle with goblins.

Mid-1930s C.S. Lewis and some of his students meet in his rooms in Magdalen College to read and discuss Beowulf. One of Lewis’s students, E.L. Edmonds, will later recall that Tolkien came quite often to these ‘beer and Beowulf’ evenings. ‘It was very obvious that [Tolkien and Lewis] were great friends – indeed, they were like two young bear cubs sometimes, just happily quipping with one another’ (‘C.S. Lewis, the Teacher’, In Search of C.S. Lewis, (1983), p. 45).

Mid-1930s–end of 1937 Tolkien revises some components of his ‘Silmarillion’ mythology and writes new texts. He does not necessarily finish one work before starting another, and makes changes to previously written texts to conform with new story elements or changed names as they emerge. Works from this period include, in the probable order in which they are begun: the ‘later’ Annals of Beleriand, a fuller and more finished version of the ‘earliest’ Annals; the *Ambarkanta: The Shape of the World, a list of cosmographical words and explanations and a description of the world of the mythology, accompanied by three diagrams and two maps; the ‘later’ Annals of Valinor, a development of the ‘earliest’ Annals; the first version of *The Tale of Years, as an accompaniment to the Annals as they become fuller; the *Lhammas or ‘Account of Tongues’, in three versions (the third entitled Lammasethen), which describes the development and interrelationships of the various Elvish languages and also includes information about the speech of the Valar, Men, and Orcs, with summaries of the history of the Elves and two ‘genealogical tables’, The Tree of Tongues and The Peoples of the Elves; a substantial work on Noldorin phonology, and a five-page exposition of Elvish runes; two brief texts, *The Elvish Alphabets, which describes the Noldorin alphabets of Rúmil and Fëanor and the Runic alphabet of Dairon, and *The ‘Alphabet of Dairon’ which includes more information about runes; the *Ainulindalë, the first retelling of the Creation myth since The Music of the Ainur in The Book of Lost Tales; and the *Quenta Silmarillion, in which the mythology is told as a narrative at much greater length than in the Quenta Noldorinwa and which incorporates much new material. In the latter Tolkien has great difficulty in compressing the tale of Beren and Lúthien which he had told at great length in the Lay of Leithian, and rejects drafts that are disproportionate to the rest of the work; while he is writing another version of this story, he sends a fair copy of the Quenta Silmarillion to George Allen & Unwin to be considered for publication (see entry for 15 November 1937). – Probably contemporary with his work on the Lhammas and the Quenta Silmarillion, Tolkien prepares the *Etymologies (or Beleriandic and Noldorin Names and Words), ‘an etymological dictionary of word-relationships: an alphabetically-arranged list of primary stems, or “bases”, with their derivatives’ (Christopher Tolkien, *The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987), pp. 342–3). This is apparently compiled progressively through the alphabet, but changes are made in the course of composition. Associated with the Etymologies, at the end of this period, Tolkien also explores spelling in his Elvish languages.