The History of Galadriel and Celeborn

[Galin]

In note 8 to Of Dwarves And Men, Christopher Tolkien points to explicit statements in Appendix E (II) about the origin of the Runes, and comments about his father pondering something Elrond had said...

"... Thus the inconsistency, if inconsistency there was, could scarcely be removed; but in fact there was none. It was the "moon runes" that Elrond declared (...) to have been invented by the Dwarves and written by them with silver pens, not the Runes as an alphabetic form -- as my father at length noted with relief. I mention all this as an illustration of his intense concern to avoid discrepancy and inconsistency, even though in this case his anxiety was unfounded."

Christopher Tolkien, The Peoples of Middle-earth

Or try this: invent a "fantasy race" with a bit of a history and some details about them as they are "at present", and see how fast you are locked into a number of facts that you think should remain true as your tale unfolds. Doesn't mean you must abide by every detail of course, but how much will you overturn or refashion, and for what reason?

Concern with consistency is a general must; even when you choose to be inconsistent you are taking it into account, in a sense.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Agreed. Overall there has to be order; but you still want your ersatz Beowulf manuscript (or Book of Mazarbul) to be a bit burned around the edges.

[Galin]

... by publishing certain changes when Ace Books provided him with the chance, for example.

I would like to add that the world was different back when Tolkien did this. Tolkien scholarship today is way more abundant I would guess, and even if not, today there's the internet. I think Tolkien gave in to his penchant for revision because he thought the first edition would fade away, be swamped by the revised edition, and in a way he is correct: how many readers today realize that omentielmo became omentielvo (second edition), or know about the "omentilmo scare"?

But today, very many people can log on to a chat site such as this, people who might never have picked up a first edition, and easily enough find out that "Frodo" made an error... ahem, yes Tolkien even tried to keep this internal, stating (in drafts at least) that it was Frodo's error, but he likely thought the change would fade into obscurity anyway, and that even if anyone knew, they would not be able to mention it on a "machine"...

... which could hold the information for years, waiting for any Tolkien fan to read.

Well, I can't know obvously. But I think in this world Tolkien would have at least thought twice about certain little tweaks to the second edition, and it's my attempt to try to explain how Tolkien could be, on the one hand, so concerned with consistency, and on the other, willing to niggle little details like... erm, who Galadriel's father was!

Finrod (first edition)... well not the person that was her brother, but he was named Inglor behind the scenes.

That and the fact that he's human.

I agree JRRT wanted some fuzzy or burnt edges, but in consideration of that, all the more I would say we let Tolkien burn the edges. But what does that mean? In my opinion the mere fact that a text exists doesn't mean a niggler of details like Tolkien is willing to publish it, especially if he will be creating a notable inconsistency, and especially if the text in question is in an obviously unfinished state. I'm far from convinced JRRT would have fuzzed the edges of Galadriel as a leader of the Rebellion, and it would have been something for him to have at least acknowledged that he was stepping on already published details here. It would have been perfectly Tolkienian for him to offer some reason why two stories about this existed internally, if, that is, he thought this plausible enough. I mean how much became garbled? And Galadriel was related to Elrond, a noted loremaster!

Tolkien didn't even note that any problem existed, much less try to work around it in some fashion. Could he have forgotten the history he had published in RGEO?

Well, due to a text dated 1968 or later, Christopher Tolkien thinks that his father forgot that Celebrimbor was a Feanorean, and that if he had remembered he would have felt bound by what he had published... and Tolkien had only published that detail for the second edition in the 1960s!

I might think it odd that "only" a couple years had (perhaps) passed since Tolkien added Celebrimbor the Feanorean to the published Appendices (before forgetting this), but then again I try to remember what I wrote two years ago on a Christmas card or something, and I have no clue.

Plus, Tolkien didn't have Hammond and Scull's Companions to help him!

And then there's age... and as I age I can say... well I get it

[William Cloud Hicklin]

From both Carpenter, and especially comments made by CRT, it's apparent that Tolkien's memory from ~1968 on wasn't all it had been; moreover, the move to Bournemouth in that year (for which he wasn't present, having broken his leg) reduced his papers to chaos (or, speaking as a person about as organised as JRRT, a different chaos unlike the familiar chaos)*, and in his last years he simply wasn't able to lay his hands on older writings. CRT's description of the papers as he found them in 1973 is, well, terrifying.

Yes, I do think it's entirely possible that he had forgotten the brief 'historical' comments he had written for RGEO; as far as he was concerned, the Elder Days were still unpublished and he was free to reshape them as he liked.

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*The worst possible "favor" anyone can do for me is clean up my desk! I know exactly which heap something is in.....