#hme

[larryshapiro]

Kaneville FPD, IL - HME 1871 pumper

[life-spire]

[zerrissener]

alte freunde, ich vermiss sie falsche freunde, ich vergess sie

- big toe a.k.a. fatal

[maulish]

The History of Middle-earth and other Sources

I’ve realized that I’ve taken it for granted that people know what I’m talking about when referencing The History of Middle-earth (or HME for short). It’s not inherent knowledge for everyone interested in Tolkien’s works and given the multitude of sources and different ways of citing them, it can be a bit confusing. So I think the matter deserves clarifying, especially as there’s always someone new to the material trying to find their way around.

Tolkien wrote a lot more than what was published during his lifetime. And I would say that it was his son Christopher’s life’s work to find a way to share what his father could not. Some of it was at the time of Tolkien’s passing already complete enough to be published independently. This is how we have The Silmarillion. There are also texts that needed varying degrees of editing that were published later: Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, The Children of Húrin, The Fall of Gondolin, Beren and Lúthien. 

But there’s a vast amount of material that is comprised of comments, ideas, opinions, correspondence, notes and revisions. This is essentially what The History of Middle-earth is. It’s a body of work consisting of 12 volumes that’s been published in both 3 and 12-volume editions. Each volume is dedicated to a paricular set of stories or part of the mythos and follows the development of respective ideas through the transformations and omissions that these texts have gone through in the process of creating the final, published work. 

For example, something that has been published in HME is The New Shadow, which is the beginning to a work that would have followed The Lord of the Rings, had Tolkien not abandoned writing it. And as I myself am somewhat Orc-obsessed, I have paid particular attention to parts of HME, and now later TNME, that elaborate on the subject. I have tried to cite sources diligently so if someone would like to examine those sources themselves, it would be possible to find exactly what I’m talking about.

Christopher Tolkien also made the decision not to inluce materials involving the creation of The Hobbit in HME, and thus such texts were later published independently of materials regarding the The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion as The History of The Hobbit, compiled by John D. Rateliff.

And now there’s the addition of The Nature of Middle-earth (Late Writings on the Lands, Inhabitants, and Metaphysics of Middle-earth), edited by Carl F. Hosetter. To me it very much acts as a continuation to HME, and as it relies heavily on references to texts published in HME, I believe it would be difficult to really makes sense of what it offers without consulting HME. 

The History of Middle-earth alone is an intimidating 5440 pages, across either 3 or 12 books, depending on the edition. It can be a lot to take in. But I also find that it’s an invaluable source of context that has definitely reframed the view a number of times. There was so much more Tolkien wanted to express — the layers of history, scope and depth of feeling that were impossible to compress into a single, finished and easy-to-access text.

[minijeong]

kwon eunbi - highlight [MGMA 2019]

[amusteredmind]

[multipleexostoses]

Hey guys!

I know it’s been a long time we posted on this. Life’s been pretty hard. We’re both busy with school and going to the hospital. Now we have some time during the pandemic. I hope everyone is safe and healthy ( as you can be ). I promise from now on I will post more even talk. I’m even going to make an email. Specially for you guys that’s alone in this time. Or just feel alone. We are here for you. We love all of you. If you want to talk about MHE or just any other illness We are here for you. Or if you just want to talk we are here for you! I’ll try and make the email against tomorrow because we do live in Belgium and the time difference is different. Currently it’s 00:30 here. I will even give Naziha the info of the emails so she can talk to you guys too. ( she lost her password and everything of this tumblr ).

I hope all of you are happy, healthy and painfree!

~~ Kaya 🖤

[differentbutstillthesame]

I recently had some bad news regarding my Chronic illness (Hereditary Multiple Exostoses) and I’ve been trying to digest it on my own. Everybody is pushing me to talk about it and I just don’t want to talk about it. I just want to forget about it. I just want to pretend it didn’t happen. At this moment I just want to be left alone.