Autograph manuscript | 1955, The Return of the King.
J. R. R. Tolkien | The Return of the King, autograph manuscript correction, spring 1955
J. R. R. Tolkien autograph manuscript, headed “Further correction desired”, recording a late and substantive revision to The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter VI, “Many Partings”. N.p., spring 1955.
One page, 194 x 122 mm. Written in brown ink in Tolkien’s distinctive calligraphic script, with contemporary editorial and printers’ markings in blue and red ink.
The manuscript reads in full:
“Further correction desired.
Vol III Return of the King, bk. Six.
Ch. VI (Many Partings).
For:
...said Eowyn, ‘and in the deeps
of time it was made for our fore-
fathers by the dwarves, and Eorl
the Young...
Substitute:
...said Eowyn. ‘It was made by
the Dwarves, and came from the
hoard of Scatha the Worm.
Eorl the Young...”
The sheet is annotated at upper right in another hand in blue ink, “p 256 / line / 25”, the passage in fact appearing at line 26 of the first edition, and in red ink beside a check mark: “Corrected / J[illegible] / 11-6-55”. The initial may refer to Jarrold & Sons, printers of The Return of the King.
The correction was made during the final production stages of The Return of the King and entered the published text on page 256 of the first edition. Tolkien replaced the earlier wording, “and in the deeps of time it was made for our forefathers by the dwarves”, with the considerably more specific:
“It was made by the Dwarves, and came from the hoard of Scatha the Worm.”
This was not merely a stylistic alteration. Tolkien was adding a specific piece of Middle-earth history at the proof stage, connecting the horn presented by Éowyn to Merry with Scatha, the great dragon of the Grey Mountains, and with the older history of the Rohirrim.
Christopher Tolkien specifically records the change in Sauron Defeated, noting that the reference to Scatha “entered on the galley Proof”.
The importance of the leaf is further established by the surviving Tolkien archive at Marquette University. In a letter written in response to the owner of the present manuscript, Marquette archivist Charles B. Elston confirmed that both the autograph manuscript and typescript of “Many Partings” preserve the earlier wording. The revised reference to Scatha appears only on the galley sheets for Book Six.
The present leaf therefore records the precise stage at which this piece of Middle-earth history entered the published text.
Tolkien was still revising the conclusion and the complicated appendices of The Lord of the Rings after The Return of the King had already been typeset. The present correction was made only months before publication in October 1955, after much of the principal manuscript had already been returned to him.
The great majority of Tolkien’s surviving working material for The Lord of the Rings is now preserved institutionally. Marquette University acquired the manuscripts of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and other literary works from Tolkien in 1957, with the Lord of the Rings papers subsequently transferred to Milwaukee. Original manuscript material from the composition and production of the trilogy therefore appears exceptionally rarely in private hands.
Few autograph manuscripts relating directly to the original edition of The Lord of the Rings have appeared at auction. Surviving working leaves remaining outside institutional collections consequently represent some of the most elusive Tolkien material still obtainable.
An exceptional Tolkien manuscript from the final creation of The Lord of the Rings, preserving the moment the hoard of Scatha the Worm entered the published narrative.
