Gandalf’s Possible Inaccuracy in the chapter “The Shadow of the Past”

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"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.