"GL3" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol10)

typescript of the Annals of Aman (also extant in top copy and carbon),
and both texts may well belong to the same time - say 1958. LQ 2
(like LQ 1) has naturally no textual value in itself, but it received
careful emendation in Chapter 1 Of the Valar (thereafter, however,
only scattered jottings).
Finally, my father turned to new narrative writing in the Matter of
the First Age before the Hiding of Valinor. The first chapter, Of the
Valar, much altered at this time, became separated off from the
Quenta Silmarillion proper under the title Valaquenta; while the sixth
chapter, Of the Silmarils and the Darkening of Valinor (numbered 4 in
QS, V.227), and a part of the seventh, Of the Flight of the Noldor
(numbered 5 in QS), were very greatly enlarged and gave rise to new
chapters with these titles:
Of Finwe and Miriel
Of Feanor and the Unchaining of Melkor
Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor
Of the Darkening of Valinor
Of the Rape of the Silmarils
Of the Thieves' Quarrel
This new work exemplifies the 'remoulding' to which my father
looked forward in the letter to Rayner Unwin cited above. It repre-
sents (together with much other writing of a predominantly specula-
tive nature) a second phase in his later work on The Silmarillion. The
first phase included the new version of the Lay of Leithian, the later
Ainulindale, the Annals of Aman and the Grey Annals, the later Tale
of Tuor, and the first wave of revision of the Quenta Silmarillion,
much of this work left unfinished. The years 1953 - 5 saw the
preparation and publication of The Lord of the Rings; and there seems
reason to think that it was a good while yet before he turned again to
The Silmarillion, or at least to its earlier chapters.
In these substantially rewritten chapters of the 'second phase' he
was moving strongly into a new conception of the work, a new and
much fuller mode of narrative - envisaging, as it appears, a thorough-
going 're-expansion' from the still fairly condensed form (despite a
good deal of enlargement in the 1951 revision) that went back through
QS and Q to the 'Sketch of the Mythology' of 1926, which had made a
brief summary from the amplitude of The Book of Lost Tales (on this
evolution see IV.76).
It has been difficult to find a satisfactory method of presentation for
the later evolution of The Silmarillion. In the first place, the chapters
must obviously be treated separately, since the extent of the later
development, and the textual history, varies so widely. Equally clearly,
a complete documentation of every alteration from start to finish (that



is detailing the precise sequence of change through successive texts) is
out of the question. After much experimentation the plan I have
followed is based on this consideration: seeing that a great deal of the
development can be ascribed to a relatively short time (the '1951