"PREFACE" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol05)

narrative texts. The List of Names might have been better
included in Vol. IV, but this was again a work of reference which
provides very little new matter, and it was more convenient to
postpone it and then to give just those few entries which offer new
detail. The second Map is a different case. This was my father's
sole 'Silmarillion' map for some forty years, and here I have
redrawn it to show it as it was when first made, leaving out all the
layer upon layer of later accretion and alteration. The Tale of
Years and the Tale of Battles, listed in title-pages to The Sil-
marillion as elements in that work (see p. 202), are not included,
since they were contemporary with the later Annals and add
nothing to the material found in them; subsequent alteration of
names and dates was also carried out in a precisely similar way.
In places the detailed discussion of dating may seem excessive,
but since the chronology of my father's writings, both 'internal'
and 'external', is extremely difficult to determine and the evidence
full of traps, and since the history can be very easily and very
seriously falsified by mistaken deductions on this score, I have
wished to make as plain as I can the reasons for my assertions.
In some of the texts I have introduced paragraph-numbering.
This is done in the belief that it will provide a more precise and
therefore quicker method of reference in a book where the dis-
cussion of its nature moves constantly back and forth.
As in previous volumes I have to some degree standardized
usage in respect of certain names: thus for example I print Gods,
Elves, Orcs, Middle-earth, etc. with initial capitals, and Kor,
Tun, Earendel, Numenorean, etc. for frequent Kor, Tun,
Earendel, Numenorean of the manuscripts.
The earlier volumes of the series are referred to as I (The Book of
Lost Tales Part I), II (The Book of Lost Tales Part 11), III (The
Lays of Beleriand), and IV (The Shaping of Middle-earth).
The sixth volume now in preparation will concern the evolution of
The Lard of the Rings.
The tables illustrating The Lhammas are reproduced with the

permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, who kindly supplied
photographs.

I list here for convenience the abbreviations used in the book in
reference to various works {for a fuller account see pp. 107 - 8).

Texts in Vol. IV:
S. The Sketch of the Mythology or 'earliest Silmarillion'.
Q. The Quenta ('Quenta Noldorinwa'), the second version
of 'The Silmarillion'.
AV1. The earliest Annals of Valinor.
AB1. The earliest Annals of Beleriand (in two versions, the
second early abandoned).
Texts in Vol. V:
FN. The Fall of Numenor (FN I and FN II referring to the