Proof of Typesetting: Fëanáro[.] and Ulmo's Troublesome Italics

Two rather well known misprints that appear in the first hardback edition of The Silmarillion are the Fëanor (p. 330) and Ulmo (p. 352) errors found in the Index; cited, with other errors, in Hammond & Anderson's J.R.R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography (St Paul's Bibliographies / Oak Knoll Books, 1993, pp. 215–216), and stated to have been ‘corrected in a later impression or impressions’. 

They are widely quoted, usually in booksellers' listings and catalogues; more often than not to reinforce the claim of superior priority of one particular copy (being sold) over another. But how did GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN—or, perhaps more accurately, how did WILLIAM CLOWES & SONS (printers)—allow these two particular errors to initially appear in print?

We would probably never know had it not been for the survival of a set of page proofs of The Silmarillion, formally in the possession of Rayner Unwin. They are of CLOWES origin, certainly; but of what precise date isn't clear. In Descriptive Bibliography it is said that ‘proofs were ready in March 1977’; there is little reason to doubt that these proofs date from around this time.

A couple of caveats. The following comments are in respect to CLOWES printed copies only: how the CLOWES typesetting developed (pre-publication) from proof to publication state(s). The presence—and later correction—of some of the other errors listed in Descriptive Bibliography, how the other printers corrected errors, how CLOWES continued to correct further errors, is a larger topic not dealt with here.  

We also do not have the corresponding manuscript copy for comparison—which would be of bibliographical, as well as bookish, interest—to see what CLOWES were working from when they were preparing these page proofs. I have assumed Christopher Tolkien's manuscript to have been accurate—the entries (assuming he compiled the Index) to be as he intended—for the purposes of this discussion.

In these page proofs the index is included (and complete), and both the Fëanor and Ulmo errors are present; but not in the form(s) we would recognise. By examining the proofs—one of the earliest typesettings of The Silmarillion we are (ever) likely to encounter—and noting how the errors appear at this early typesetting stage, the genesis of these two misprints becomes a little clearer. 

Proof copy p. 330

As can be seen from the above image, the proof typesetting has ‘Fëanáro’—from the beginning of the line—duplicated at the end of the sentence. The full stop is also missing.

PROOF, p. 330, line 4:

Fëanáro ‘Spirit of Fire’, which was given the Sindarin form Fëanáro 

 

PUBLISHED (first state), p. 330, line 4: 

Fëanáro ‘Spirit of Fire’, which was given the Sindarin form Fëanor 

 

PUBLISHED (corrected), p. 330, line 4: 

Fëanáro ‘Spirit of Fire’, which was given the Sindarin form Fëanor.

From this it might be inferred that the proof was checked, the error(s) identified, and the typesetting changed; but either the omission of the full stop wasn't noticed, or it was overlooked for a second time, as the more important—purely from a manuscript understanding perspective—naming error was corrected. The typesetter's familiarity with Sindarin form was presumably basic to nonexistent.

Proof copy p. 352

With the Ulmo error we have a similar mis-correction. Here, the proof typesetting has ‘Lord of Waters and King of the Sea’ entirely un-italicised.

PROOF, p. 352, line 39:

A Vala, one of the Aratar, called Lord of Waters and King of the Sea.

 

PUBLISHED (first state), p. 352, line 39:

A Vala, one of the Aratar, called Lord of Waters and King of the Sea. 

 

PUBLISHED (corrected), p. 352, line 39:

A Vala, one of the Aratar, called Lord of Waters and King of the Sea.

From this it might be inferred that, again, the proof was checked, the error identified, and the typesetting changed. The ‘and’ was either: simply italicised unintentionally, or misinterpreted as part of one continuous name/title (not two separate ones) all requiring italics. It could be noted—since this seems to be an obvious biblical echo—that in Revelation (19:16) ‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords’ is variously printed in different versions of The Bible; in the King James Version it is printed as ‘KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS’. The intended format (for Ulmo) wasn't, perhaps, immediately obvious.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to thank the owner of these page proofs for allowing me to share and discuss these images.