Tolkien's final First Age timeline

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Amalcarin

I think the relative placing of these notes by Christopher is confusing, given that he also seems to indicate that the notes from PoMe 317–8 were written by Tolkien in his copy of the second edition of The Return of the King (1966).

Huh. Agreed: the quote is pretty unambiguous:

Thus in the Second Edition (1966) of The Lord of the Rings, at the end of the prefatory remarks to the Tale of Years of the Second Age, he added the sentence: "Celebrimbor was lord of Eregion and the greatest of their craftsmen; he was descended from Feanor."

On one of his copies of The Return of the King he underlined the name Feanor in this sentence, and wrote the following two notes on the opposite page...

Which pins the notes as 1966+, while the Gil-Galad note given by CT after Shibboleth is dated firmly to August 1965. This has no impact on Celebrimbor or Gil-Galad - they are each only in one note - but it's critical for Finrod, who as of 1966 now has his wife (unnamed, but her latest name is Amarie) with him in Nargothrond. That postdates Athrabeth and I believe all work on the Quenta Silmarillion as a narrative; unless Finrod having no wife in Middle-earth is mentioned in Shibboleth, the latest position is that she went with him to Nargothrond.

hS