View Single Post
Old 08-13-2016, 12:07 PM   #51
William Cloud Hicklin
Loremaster of Annúminas
 
William Cloud Hicklin's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,301
William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
"I’ll bet that somewhere in those musty boxes in Milwaukee or Oxford, someone will find the old professor’s scribblings on the origins of at least the Lord of the Nazgûl."

Maybe, but I doubt it.

With the exception of the final typescripts and a few earlier drafts for the LR, Hobbit and Mr Bliss which went to Marquette, Tolkien kept all his papers and Christopher inherited them. CT has over time sent most of them to Milwaukee if LR or Hobbit related, or the Bodleian if not; but in all cases only after going through them with a fine-toothed comb, generally after having been reviewed for possible publication in HME. At the time HME XII came out he commented that "the well is just about dry;" and I strongly suspect that if something as momentous as a thumbnail bio of the Witch-king were there, he would have published it as he did with the Glorfindel essays and the like.
__________________
The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
William Cloud Hicklin is offline   Reply With Quote