“wrote it ages ago”: Christopher Tolkien, foreword to The Hobbit, 50th-anniversary ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), vi–vii.
“In a hole in the ground”: Tolkien’s account in a BBC interview, quoted in Douglas A. Anderson, The Annotated Hobbit, rev. and exp. ed. annotated by Douglas A. Anderson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 11. See also the June 7, 1955 letter to W. H. Auden, in which Tolkien relates the same story, in Tolkien, Letters, 215.
“Babbitt”: Tolkien’s suggestion in an interview: see Michael N. Stanton, “Hobbits,” in Drout, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, 280.
“rabbit”: Tom Shippey sees some merit in the “rabbit” connection: Shippey, Road to Middle-earth, 67–70; see Tolkien’s letters on this subject, Letters, 30, 406–407.
a single instance of “hobbit”: In Michael Aislable Denham, The Denham Tracts, Publications of the Folk-Lore Society 35 (London: D. Nutt, 1895). Discussed by Anderson, Annotated Hobbit, 9, and Marjorie Burns, “Tracking the Elusive Hobbit (in Its Pre-Shire Den),” Tolkien Studies 4 (2007): 200–11. See John D. Rateliff, The History of the Hobbit, part 2, appendix 1, “The Denham Tracts” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2007), 841–54.
very little about Tolkien’s creative process: Shippey, Road to Middle-earth, 66–67.
“had been inside language”: C. S. Lewis, unsigned obituary for Tolkien (written far in advance of Tolkien’s death), “Professor J. R. R. Tolkien: Creator of Hobbits and inventor of a new mythology,” The Times (London), September 3, 1973.
Oxford English Dictionary: Tolkien discusses the OED entry for Hobbit in his 1971 letter to Roger Lancelyn Green, Letters, 406–407. Hobbit (n.) first appeared in the OED in 1976, along with hobbitish (a.), hobbitomane (n.), and hobbitry (n.); so far no etymology is provided, but future updates are promised. As far as capitalization is concerned, Tolkien is not entirely consistent, but his rule of thumb seems to have been to capitalize words like Hobbits, Elves, Men, Dwarves, where the reference is to a race—to Mankind, and its analogues—but to use lowercase when it is a matter of referring to one or more individual members. See his December 1937 letter on this subject to Allen & Unwin: Tolkien, Letters, 28; we have generally followed this practice.
Several scholars have labored mightily: Since Humphrey Carpenter made the first attempt in his 1977 Tolkien biography, and Tom Shippey followed the trail in The Road to Middle-earth (which first appeared in 1982), the problem has been studied by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond, by Douglas A. Anderson, who established the work’s publication history and created The Annotated Hobbit (1988; rev. and exp. ed., 2002), and by John D. Rateliff, who spent nearly twenty years piecing together the earliest draft from manuscripts at Marquette, producing a two-volume History of the Hobbit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), a project initiated by the Tolkien scholar Taum Santoski (before his death in 1991), modeled in part on Christopher Tolkien’s twelve-volume History of Middle-earth.
Beorn: Either “man” or “warrior” in Old English but suggestive of bjorn for “bear” in Old Norse, and of Berserker legends.
Tolkien borrowed the names for the dwarves from the Dvergatal:
10. There was Motsognir | the mightiest made
Of all the dwarfs, | and Durin next;
Many a likeness | of men they made,
The dwarfs in the earth, | as Durin said.
11. Nyi and Nithi, | Northri and Suthri,
Austri and Vestri, | Althjof, Dvalin,
Nar and Nain, | Niping, Dain,
Bifur, Bofur, | Bombur, Nori,
An and Onar, | Ai, Mjothvitnir.
12. Vigg and Gandalf [= Magic Elf] | Vindalf, Thrain,
Thekk and Thorin, | Thror, Vit and Lit,
Nyr and Nyrath,— | now have I told—
Regin and Rathsvith— | the list aright.
13. Fili, Kili, | Fundin, Nali,
Heptifili, | Hannar, Sviur,
Frar, Hornbori, | Fræg and Loni,
Aurvang, Jari, | Eikinskjaldi [= Oak Shield].
From The Poetic Edda, trans. Henry Adams Bellows (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936). See Rateliff, The History of the Hobbit, part 2, appendix 3: “The Dvergatal (The Dwarf Names),” 866–71.
“a low philological jest … hole-dweller”: Tolkien, Letters, 31. A fanciful etymology would come later, as part of the work of retrofitting necessitated by the Hobbit “sequel,” The Lord of the Rings. Reasoning backward from “hobbit” in search of plausible archaic roots, Tolkien notes in the final appendix to The Lord of the Rings that the Shire-folk originally called themselves kuduk, a “worn-down form” of kûd-dûkan, which means “hole-dweller” in the tongue of Rohan; translating kûd-dûkan into (imaginary) Old English yields holbytla, from which “hobbit” would have evolved by a similar erosion, if the word had actually existed in our own language. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, appendix F, 1130, 1138. The necessarily speculative character of this etymology helps to create the effect Tom Shippey calls “asterisk reality” (Road to Middle-earth, 19–22). See also John William Houghton on “asterisk cosmogony,” in Tolkien the Medievalist, ed. Jane Chance, 171–82.
the very Smaug-like dragon: See Tolkien’s 1949 letter to Naomi Mitchison in which he says that he prefers Fáfnir to the dragon in Beowulf, and that “Smaug and his conversation obviously is in debt there.” Tolkien, Letters, 134.
a battle of wits with a loquacious dragon: See Ármann Jakobsson, “Talk to the Dragon: Tolkien as Translator,” Tolkien Studies 6 (2009): 27–39.
“more praiseworthy than the professionals”: Tolkien, Letters, 215.
“from fairy-tale to the noble and high”: Ibid., 159.
“And what would you do”: Tolkien, Hobbit, 8. See letter (draft) to Walter Allen, New Statesman, April 1959, Tolkien, Letters, 297.
Mirkwood (Old Norse Myrkviðr): William Morris anglicized Myrkviðr into “Mirkwood” in his 1899 prose and verse fantasy, A Tale of the House of the Wolflings and All the Kindreds of the Mark.
this bridging of worlds: See Shippey’s insightful discussion of Tolkien’s use of anachronism in “The Bourgeois Burglar,” chapter 3 of The Road to Middle-earth.
“lying about in a nunnery”: February 1937 letter from Tolkien to the Beowulf scholar R. W. Chambers, quoted by Douglas A. Anderson from Caroline Chabot, “Raymond Wilson Chambers (1874–1942),” Moreana 24, no. 94 (June 1987): 88, in Douglas A. Anderson, “R. W. Chambers and The Hobbit,” Tolkien Studies 3 (2006): 140.
“Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit”: Quoted in Carpenter, Tolkien, 180–81.
“wholly original story”: Richard Hughes, “Books for Pre-Adults,” New Statesman and Nation, December 4, 1937, quoted in Scull and Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide, 399.
“there and back again”: The first version Lewis read stopped short with the death of a dragon, leaving undeveloped the “there and back again” theme that would be so salient a feature of the final tale.
“The publishers claim”: C. S. Lewis, “A World for Children,” The Times Literary Supplement 1861 (October 2, 1937): 761. Reprinted in Lewis, On Stories, 81.
“the truth is that in this book”: “Professor Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit,’” unsigned review by Lewis in The Times (London) 47810, October 8, 1937, p. 20.
“I must respect his opinion … I rather wish I had used”: Tolkien, Letters, 23–24.
woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, and goblins: Hammond and Scull, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, 76.
“Some … are very good”: J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters from Father Christmas, ed. Baillie Tolkien (December 23, 1932), 78.
“I brought you all up ill”: Tolkien, Letters, 340.
“He would like to take us out for walks”: Michael Tolkien interview, Minas Tirith Evening-Star (Journal of the American Tolkien Society) 8, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 9.
“a nervy, irritable, cross-grained”: Quoted in Carpenter, Tolkien, 169.
“receptive … real soul mate”: Tolkien, Letters, 49–51.
“I am in fact a Hobbit”: Tolkien, Letters, 288.
“in its day and to its users a natural, easy, and cultivated speech”: Tolkien, preface, The Ancrene Riwle, ed. and trans. M. B. Salu (London: Burns & Oates, 1955), v.
“Vilitas et asperitas”: Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses, trans. Hugh White (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993), 163–64.
“crimes of omission … My edition of the prime MS.”: Tolkien, Letters, 301–302. Tolkien’s critical edition finally appeared in 1962: J.R.R. Tolkien, Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, edited from MS, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 402 (London and New York: Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1962).
“The Historical and Legendary Tradition”: Michael D. C. Drout, in J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf and the Critics, ed. Michael D. C. Drout (2nd ed., rev.; Tempe, Ariz.: ACMRS [Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies], 2011), 4.
“an unforgettable experience”: Carpenter, Tolkien, 133.
“It is of their nature”: Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” The Monsters and the Critics, 9.
“a history of Sweden”: Ibid., 7.
“carvings and inscriptions … from the top of that tower”: Ibid., 8.
“as if Milton”: Ibid., 13.
“the hostile world … its lofty tone”: Ibid., 18–19.
“glimpses the cosmic … we look down”: Ibid., 33.
“a Christian was”: Ibid., 22.
“You must not delete”: Bodleian Library MS Tolkien 4, fol. 58. Quoted in Drout, Beowulf and the Critics, 4.
“myth is alive”: Tolkien, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” 15.
“a very lively and happy child”: Barfield, quoted in Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 758.
“Why not take”: Owen Barfield, foreword, Orpheus: A Poetic Drama, ed. John C. Ulreich, Jr. (West Stockbridge, Mass.: Lindisfarne, 1983), 7.
“shall ascend Parnassus awake”: Barfield, Orpheus: A Poetic Drama, act 4, scene 3, 112.
“simply superb”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 223.
“H is for Hume”: The Oxford Magazine 52 (November 30, 1933): 298.
“A is for [Acland]”: Don W. King, C. S. Lewis, Poet: The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse, rev. and exp. ed. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2001), 171.
“under eclipse”: Sugerman, “Conversation with Owen Barfield,” 9.
“In the afternoon J and I”: Warren H. Lewis, unpublished diary entry for November 5, 1933, in the collection of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, quoted in Colin Duriez, The C. S. Lewis Chronicles (New York: BlueBridge, 2005), 162.
“blood feast”: According to Barfield, quoted in Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 714.
“in much the same way”: W. H. Lewis, Brothers and Friends, 128.
“a woman of very limited mind”: Warren Lewis, “Memoir of C. S. Lewis,” 33.
“false picture … a normal and reasonably happy”: Owen Barfield, foreword to Lewis, All My Road Before Me, x.
“An outside friend”: C. S. Lewis, “The Trouble with ‘X’…,” in C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1970), 151–55. First published in the Bristol Diocesan Gazette 27 (August 1948): 3–6.
10. ROMANTIC THEOLOGY
“Williams!”: Wain, Sprightly Running, 147.
“No man whom I have known”: Lewis, preface, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, ix.
“I think he was a man of unusual genius”: T. S. Eliot, “The Significance of Charles Williams,” The Listener 936 (December 19, 1946): 894.
“liked to beat them with a ruler”: Lois Lang-Sims, personal interview, July 17, 2006.
“His face we thought ugly … This double-sidedness”: Lewis, preface, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, ix–xii.
“He was nothing if not a ritualist”: Ibid., ix.
“Why, you come into the room”: Dylan Thomas, quoted by Anne Ridler in introduction to Charles Williams, The Image of the City and Other Essays, selected by Anne Ridler (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), xx.
“trembling … staccato eagerness”: Theodore Maynard, “The Poetry of Charles Williams,” The North American Review, 210, 766 (September 1919): 401–411.
“He was never still”: T. S. Eliot, introduction to Charles Williams, All Hallows’ Eve (New York: The Noonday Press / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), xii.
“I go to my daily work”: Alice Mary Hadfield, An Introduction to Charles Williams (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1959), 28.
“He used to march into church”: Alice Mary Hadfield, Charles Williams: An Exploration of His Life and Work (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 5.
“the asps of blindness”: Williams uses the expression in his poem “Divorce,” dedicated to his father; quoted in Hadfield, Charles Williams, 10.
“a sort of running drama … Most of the boys tolerated”: Hadfield, Introduction to Charles Williams, 19.
“all the good I knew”: Charles Williams, “Divorce,” quoted in Hadfield, Charles Williams, 9.
“[Williams’s] affection for the Oxford University Press”: Sutcliffe, Oxford University Press: An Informal History, 203–204.
“For the first five minutes”: Michal Williams, “Appendix: As I Remember Charles Williams,” in Charles Williams, To Michal from Serge: Letters from Charles Williams to His Wife, Florence, 1939–1945, ed. Roma A. King, Jr. (Kent, Ohio, and London: Kent State University Press, 2002), 260.
“I used to say that”: Charles Williams, Letters to Lalage: The Letters of Charles Williams to Lois Lang-Sims, with commentary by Lois Lang-Sims, introduction and notes by Glen Cavaliero (Kent, Ohio, and London: Kent State University Press, 1989), 19–20.
“attitude to her husband … married a cross”: Glen Cavaliero, introduction to Williams, Letters to Lalage, 7.
“Why, I believe”: Hadfield, Charles Williams, 16.
“How else so long”: Charles Williams, “Of the purpose of Cities,” The Silver Stair (London: Herbert & Daniel [1912]), book I, X.
“Fair women”: Charles Williams, “He praises the diverse beauty of Women,” The Silver Stair, book I, XI.
“All lives of lovers”: Charles Williams, “An Ascription,” The Silver Stair, book III, LXVII.
“real poetry”: Hadfield, Charles Williams, 19.
“very kindly”: Ibid., 24.
“a path of symbolism … true light of understanding”: “The Fellowship of the Holy Cross, Constitution & Laws,” in R. A. Gilbert, A. E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts (Wellingborough: Crucible, 1987), Appendix E: (I), 183–84.
“seated on his throne … be ye transmuted”: “The Ceremony of Consecration on the Threshold of Sacred Mystery,” in Gavin Ashenden, Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2008), 34–36.
“not … much affected”: Hadfield, Charles Williams, 30.
“wholly unsympathetic”: Tolkien, Letters, 361.
Lois Lang-Sims … believed that Williams’s obsession with magic never left him: Lois Lang-Sims, personal interview, July 17, 2006.
“probably affect profoundly”: Quoted in Alice M. Hadfield, “Introduction: The Writing of ‘Outlines of Romantic Theology,’” in Charles Williams, Outlines of Romantic Theology, edited and introduced by Alice Mary Hadfield (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990), xii.
“is capable of being assumed”: Williams, Outlines of Romantic Theology, 9.
theology has paid scant attention: Other reasons would be presented by C. S. Lewis, in his Allegory of Love (1936), where he maintains (to a degree that he later regretted) that during the Middle Ages marriage was primarily an economic transaction, romantic love being a matter of platonic longing or illicit adulterous love. Hence a theology of romantic married love, although ad
umbrated by Dante and Spenser, was not possible at the time.
“the whole company”: Williams, Outlines of Romantic Theology, 31.
“until this study”: Williams, Outlines of Romantic Theology, 17–18.
“I fear this”: Hadfield, Charles Williams, 45.
“a child is”: Ibid., 39.
“Christhood”: Ashenden, Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration, 211.
“a radiance rising”: Hadfield, Charles Williams, 66.
“my saint, my hero”: Ibid., 73.
“Celian moment … the moment which”: Charles Williams, ed., The New Book of English Verse (London: Victor Gollancz, 1935), 12–13.
“the effect of the Masque”: Hadfield, Introduction to Charles Williams, 73.
“an extraordinary state”: Ibid., 72.
“In some former existence”: Charles Williams, Poetry at Present (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), 163.
“We are told”: Charles Williams, The English Poetic Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 3.
“he always boiled”: T. S. Eliot, introduction to Williams, All Hallows’ Eve, xii.
“two feet or more … ‘O glory, glory’”: Charles Williams, The Place of the Lion (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), 40–43.
“a sound as”: Williams, Place of the Lion, 198–202.
“I have just read”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 180.
“I never know … informal club”: Ibid., 183.
“If you had delayed”: Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 740–41.
11. SECONDARY WORLDS
“a humble hobbit-fancier … dozens”: Arthur Ransome, Signalling from Mars: The Letters of Arthur Ransome, edited and introduced by Hugh Brogan (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997), 249–51.
“Tollers, there is too little”: Tolkien, Letters, 378.
“excursionary ‘Thriller’”: Ibid., 29.
a great, deadly wave: The drowning of Númenor appears in several of Tolkien’s works, including The Notion Club Papers and The Silmarillion.
“a hopeless proposition”: Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin Archive, quoted in Scull and Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide, 563.
“of a very thin”: Edward Crankshaw, Tolkien–George Allen & Unwin archive, quoted in Scull and Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide, 895.
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