‘Essential’ secondary works

Thanks for the link. I was unaware of that site. Excellent! Is it new?

Ulmo wrote:
Thanks for the link. I was unaware of that site. Excellent! Is it new?

Relatively new, yes, came out late last year. It's an incredible site, isn't it?? Whoever made it must be a very interesting, handsome, and charming person. I just wish the pages would load faster!!

Well, great work. It is a nice to have an alternative to the spotty (but still much appreciated) ‘The U.S. Tolkien Guide’.

So, are you going to add The Journeys of Frodo?

Does anyone own these: Tolkien's Legendarium and Arda Reconstructed?

Ulmo wrote:
Well, great work. It is a nice to have an alternative to the spotty (but still much appreciated) ‘The U.S. Tolkien Guide’.

Thanks Ulmo I feel that it's more like complimentary sites rather than alternatives. Have you seen TCG's fanzine section? Incredible!

So, are you going to add The Journeys of Frodo?

I do plan to add Journeys very soon actually if I can find time.

Does anyone own these: Tolkien's Legendarium and Arda Reconstructed?

Guessing most people here have both, and some here (not me) may even have their names in or on them! Both great books, Legendarium is an absolutely great batch of essays by some of the very best Tolkien scholars. Arda is interesting for sure, though I think there are some divided opinions on it. Both worth having.

The Guy that runs the US site really is a clever & handsome guy...

Arda is fabulous just for what Doug attempted; with the qualifier that it's certainly not correct (judging by CT's specific reply to the book) is some of it's conclusions. Legendarium doesn't feel like a "must-have" secondary work to-be-honest. It's a great collection though; especially the Rayner Unwin piece. Haven't even looked at that in a long while; should remind myself of what's actually in it...

I wasn't aware that CT responded to Arda, can you point to where that is or give the gist please?

http://www.thehalloffire.net/forum/vi ... aea931ee365cd0cecbca9d99b

Cheers!

There is discussion of Christopher's response and the author's reaction to that in the comments of this review here:

http://themidhavens.net/heretic_lorem ... kanes-arda-reconstructed/

This quote from Doug Kane (author of the book):

It is important to realize that the “report” that Rhapsody quotes from is reporting on a sample of a much earlier and very different version of my manuscript that I sent to Christopher through the Tolkien Estate, as a courtesy. That version literally tracks the differences between the source material and the published text word by word and punctuation mark by punctuation mark. Christopher’s response to me through the Estate was brief; he did not send me this whole report. He did indicate that HoMe could not be relied on to determine what changes were made with manuscript authority. He also indicated that he did not believe that such a line by line comparison would be of sufficient interest to justify publication. He therefore politely refused to offer any assistance in moving forward with the project (which meant I was not going to get access to the actual manuscripts).

After getting this feedback, and other feedback, I radically changed the work, moving all of the tracing of the source material into the tables, and only commenting in the text on the most significant differences and trends in the choices that I felt clearly were shown to have been made. And I made sure to include the disclaimer at the beginning of the book that has already been quoted here about the limitations that I was working under.

The letter (that Rhapsody quoted from) is printed in full and discussed more fully here: http://www.thehalloffire.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2250

Thanks both... I had actually read through all that years ago, I don't know how I forgot, a very interesting and passionate discussion to be sure.