Re: Tolkien Scholars / Writers

Warrior of Rohan <ajkjr@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip>

I liked Christopher's comments about various levels, quality versus
quantity.

Glad you liked the comments! One thing I forgot was to contrast the
different mediums, and to compare the type of work done.

The media range from papers in peer-reviewed journals, and papers in
obscure professional journals, to papers in smaller magazines edited by
fans (though some are very professionally edited), to books published by
big publishing companies, to books self-published through small
publishing companies, to essays published online, collections of essays
on websites, FAQs on websites, and various other types of websites, and,
finally, stuff written in mailing lists, newsgroups and web-based
forums, ranging from small, private (ie. restricted) mailing lists, to
the completely open and (sometimes rather chaotic) Usenet newsgroups
(which is where this is appearing).

As for type of work, I began to touch on that above, with mention of
FAQs and contrasting papers with books, and papers wth essays, and
newsgroup posts with papers written for publication in a journal. But by
"type of work" I also mean that the work ranges from Tolkien editorial
work (editing and commentating on Tolkien's works - essentially
continuing and extending what Christopher Tolkien has done - examples
include the recent edition of Smith of Wootton Major, the collection of
Tolkien's draft essays and other notes on Beowulf, the forthcoming
'History of The Hobbit', and the linguistic material published over the
years), to normal editing (of collections of essays or editing a journal
like Tolkien Studies), to "normal" writing of papers, essays and books.
I mustn't forget those who write ground-breaking material that involves
extensive research at various Tolkien archives (Marquette and Bodleian),
and access to Tolkien's letters and whatnot - in this category I would
include the biographical writers (Carpenter and Garth and others - I
think there are others, but their names escape me). There is also, I
believe, a range of editorial work done behind the scenes as well, such
as the indexing and improved indexing of various books.

You also mentioned collectors. I was going to bring this up in the new
thread, but it seems appropriate here. The work done by Tolkien
collectors who publish various lists and stuff is immense, though it may
not be of immediate interest outside their field. Though sometimes the
massive collections become famous. One that I heard of recently was the
Richard E. Blackwelder collection. Looking at what he did reminds me
that he also worked to document and catalogue more obscure areas of
Tolkieniana, including (I think) newspaper cuttings and fanzines. Which
segues neatly into the work (or maybe "activity" is a better word for
this) done within fan societies and similar organisations, some of which
is documented in correspondence, newsletters and fan magazines and
bulletins.

Christopher

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