NOTE ON THE TEXT J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes. The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, was published in Great Britain by the London firm George Allen & Unwin on 29 July 1954; an American edition followed on 21 October of the same year, published by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston. In the production of this first volume, Tolkien experienced what became for him a continual problem: printer’s errors and compositor’s mistakes, including well-intentioned ‘corrections’ of his sometimes idiosyncratic usage. These ‘corrections’ include the altering of dwarves to dwarfs, eluish to elfish, further to farther, nasturtians to nasturtiums, try and say to try to say and (‘worst of all’ to Tolkien) elven to elfin. In a work such as The Lord of the Rings, containing invented languages and delicately constructed nomenclatures, errors and inconsistencies impede both the understanding and the appreciation of serious readers — and Tolkien had many such readers from very early on. Even before the publication of the third volume, which contained much hitherto unrevealed information on the invented languages and writing systems, Tolkien received many letters from readers written in these systems, in addition to numerous enquiries on the finer points of their usage. The second volume, The Two Towers, was published in England on 11 November 1954 and in the United States on 21 April 1955. Meanwhile Tolkien worked to keep a promise he had made in the foreword to volume one: that ‘an index of names and strange words’ would appear in the third volume. As originally planned, this index would contain much etymological information on the languages, particularly on the elven tongues, with a large vocabulary. It proved the chief cause of the delay in publishing volume three, which in the end contained no index at all, only an apology from the publisher for its absence. For Tolkien had abandoned work on it after indexing volumes one and two, believing its size and therefore its cost to be ruinous. Volume three, The Return of the King, finally appeared in England on 20 October 1955 and in the United States on 5 January 1956. With the appearance of the third volume, The Lord of the Rings was published in its entirety, and its first edition text remained virtually
關於文本的說明 J.R.R. 托爾金的《魔戒》常被錯誤地稱為三部曲，但它實際上是一部單一的小說，由六本書和附錄組成，有時分三卷出版。第一卷《魔戒首部曲：魔戒現身》於1954年7月29日由倫敦的喬治·艾倫與昂溫公司在英國出版；同年10月21日，美國版由波士頓的霍頓·米夫林公司出版。在這第一卷的製作過程中，托爾金遇到了一個對他來說持續不斷的問題：印刷錯誤和排字員的失誤，其中包括對他有時獨特的用法進行「善意」的「修正」。這些「修正」包括將 dwarves 改為 dwarfs，eluish 改為 elfish，further 改為 farther，nasturtians 改為 nasturtiums，try and say 改為 try to say，以及（對托爾金來說「最糟糕的」）elven 改為 elfin。在像《魔戒》這樣包含虛構語言和精心構建的命名系統的作品中，錯誤和不一致會妨礙嚴肅讀者的理解和欣賞——而托爾金從很早開始就有許多這樣的讀者。甚至在第三卷出版之前，其中包含了許多迄今未公開的關於虛構語言和書寫系統的資訊，托爾金就收到了許多讀者用這些系統寫的信件，此外還有許多關於其用法細節的詢問。第二卷《魔戒二部曲：雙城奇謀》於1954年11月11日在英國出版，並於1955年4月21日在美國出版。同時，托爾金努力履行他在第一卷序言中做出的承諾：第三卷中將會出現「人名和奇特詞彙索引」。按照最初的計劃，這個索引將包含大量關於這些語言的詞源資訊，特別是關於精靈語的，並附有大量的詞彙。事實證明，這是第三卷延遲出版的主要原因，該卷最終根本沒有包含索引，只有出版商為其缺失而發表的道歉。因為托爾金在索引完第一卷和第二卷後就放棄了這項工作，認為其規模及其成本將是毀滅性的。第三卷《魔戒三部曲：王者再臨》最終於1955年10月20日在英國出版，並於1956年1月5日在美國出版。隨著第三卷的問世，《魔戒》全書得以出版，其初版文本幾乎保持不變。
Vili THE LORD OF THE RINGS unchanged for a decade. Tolkien had made a few small corrections, but further errors entered The Fellowship of the Ring in its December 1954 second impression when the printer, having distributed the type after the first printing, reset the book without informing the author or publisher. These include misrepresentations of the original printed text — that is, words and phrases that read acceptably in context, but which depart from Tolkien’s wording as originally written and published. In 1965, stemming from what then appeared to be copyright problems in the United States, an American paperback firm published an unauthorized and non-royalty-paying edition of The Lord of the Rings. For this new edition by Ace Books the text of the narrative was reset, thus introducing new typographical errors; the appendices, however, were reproduced photographically from the hardcover edition, and remain consistent with it. Tolkien set to work on his first revision of the text so that a newly revised and authorized edition could successfully compete on the American market. This first revision of the text was published in America in paperback by Ballantine Books, under licence from Houghton Mifflin, in October 1965. In addition to revisions within the text itself, Tolkien replaced his original foreword with a new one. He was pleased to remove the original foreword; in his check copy, he wrote of it: ‘confusing (as it does) real personal matters with the ‘‘machinery”’ of the Tale, is a serious mistake’. Tolkien also added an extension to the prologue and an index — not the detailed index of names promised in the first edition, but, rather, a bald index with only names and page references. Additionally, at this time the appendices were greatly revised. Tolkien received his copies of the Ballantine edition in late January 1966, and in early February he recorded in his diary that he had ‘worked for some hours on the Appendices in Ballantine version & found more errors than I at first expected’. Soon after this he sent a small number of further revisions to Ballantine for the appendices, including the now well-known addition of ‘Estella Bolger’ as wife of Meriadoc in the family trees in Appendix C. Most of these revisions, which entered variously in the third and fourth impressions (June and August 1966) of volume three, and which were not always inserted correctly (thereby causing further confusion in the text), somehow never made it into the main sequence of revision in the three-volume British hardcover edition, and for long remained anomalies. Tolkien once wrote, concerning the revising of The Lord of the Rings, that perhaps he had failed to keep his notes in order; this errant branch of revision seems likely to be an example of that disorder — either in his notes or in the ability of his publishers to follow them with utmost accuracy.
《魔戒》十年未變。托爾金曾做過一些小幅修正，但在1954年12月《魔戒首部曲：魔戒現身》第二次印刷時，由於印刷廠在首次印刷後將字模拆散，並在未通知作者或出版商的情況下重新排版，導致更多錯誤進入書中。這些錯誤包括對原始印刷文本的誤讀——即，在上下文中讀起來尚可接受，但卻偏離了托爾金最初寫作和出版時的措辭的詞語和短語。1965年，由於當時美國似乎出現版權問題，一家美國平裝書公司出版了《魔戒》的未經授權且不支付版稅的版本。艾斯出版社的這個新版本重新排版了敘事文本，因此引入了新的排版錯誤；然而，附錄部分是從精裝版影印而來，並與之保持一致。托爾金著手進行了首次文本修訂，以便新修訂的授權版本能夠在美國市場上成功競爭。這次文本的首次修訂於1965年10月由巴蘭坦出版社在美國以平裝本形式出版，並獲得霍頓·米夫林出版社的授權。除了文本本身的修訂外，托爾金還用一篇新的序言取代了他原來的序言。他很高興能刪除原來的序言；在他的校對本上，他寫道：「將真實的個人事務與故事的『機制』混淆，是一個嚴重的錯誤。」托爾金還增加了序言的擴展部分和一個索引——不是第一版承諾的詳細人名索引，而是一個只有人名和頁碼參考的簡略索引。此外，此時附錄也進行了大幅修訂。托爾金於1966年1月底收到了巴蘭坦版本的書，並在2月初的日記中記錄道，他「在巴蘭坦版本的附錄上工作了幾個小時，發現的錯誤比我最初預期的要多」。此後不久，他向巴蘭坦出版社發送了少量針對附錄的進一步修訂，其中包括現在廣為人知的在附錄C的家譜中，將「艾絲黛拉·博爾傑」增補為梅里亞達克的妻子。這些修訂大部分在第三卷的第三次和第四次印刷（1966年6月和8月）中以不同方式出現，並且並非總是正確插入（因此導致文本進一步混亂），但不知何故，它們從未進入三卷本英國精裝版的主要修訂序列中，並長期以來一直是異常現象。托爾金曾寫道，關於《魔戒》的修訂，或許他未能將筆記整理妥當；這種錯誤的修訂分支似乎就是這種混亂的一個例子——無論是出現在他的筆記中，還是出現在他的出版商未能以最高精確度遵循這些筆記的能力中。
NOTE ON THE TEXT ix The revised text first appeared in Great Britain in a three-volume hardcover ‘Second Edition’ from Allen & Unwin on 27 October 1966. But again there were problems. Although the revisions Tolkien sent to America of the text itself were available to be utilized in the new British edition, his extensive revisions to the appendices were lost after being entered into the Ballantine edition. Allen & Unwin were forced to reset the appendices using the copy as published in the first Ballantine edition. This did not include Tolkien’s second, small set of revisions sent to Ballantine; but, more significantly, it did include a great number of errors and omissions, many of which were not discovered until long afterwards. Thus, in the appendices, a close scrutiny of the first edition text and of the much later corrected impressions of the second edition is necessary to discern whether any particular change in this edition is authorial or erroneous. In America, the revised text appeared in hardcover in the threevolume edition published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 February 1967. This text was evidently photo-offset from the 1966 Allen & Unwin three-volume hardcover, and is thus consistent with it. Aside from the first printing of this second Houghton Mifflin edition, which has a 1967 date on the title page, none of the many reprintings is dated. After the initial printings of this edition, which bore a 1966 copyright notice, the date of copyright was changed in 1965 to match the statement in the Ballantine edition. This change has caused a great deal of confusion for librarians and other researchers who have tried to sort out the sequence of publication of these editions. Meanwhile, Tolkien spent much of the summer of 1966 further revising the text. In June he learned that any more revisions were too late for inclusion in the 1966 Allen & Unwin second edition, and he recorded in his diary: ‘But I am attempting to complete my work [on the revisions] — I cannot leave it while it is all in my mind. So much time has been wasted in all my work by this constant breaking of threads.’ This was the last major set of revisions Tolkien himself made to the text during his lifetime. They were added to the second impression (1967) of the three-volume hardcover Allen & Unwin second edition. The revisions themselves mostly include corrections of nomenclature and attempts at consistency of usage throughout the three volumes. Some small alterations were made by Tolkien in the 1969 one-volume India paper edition. J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973. His third son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, sent a large number of further corrections of misprints, mainly in the appendices and index, to Allen & Unwin for use in their editions in 1974. Most of these corrections were typographical, and in line with his father’s expressed intent in his own check copies.
文本說明 九 修訂版文本於1966年10月27日首次在英國由Allen & Unwin出版，為三卷精裝本「第二版」。但問題再次出現。儘管托爾金寄往美國的文本修訂內容可用於新的英國版，但他對附錄的廣泛修訂在被輸入Ballantine版後遺失了。Allen & Unwin被迫使用Ballantine第一版中發布的副本重新排版附錄。這不包括托爾金寄給Ballantine的第二批小規模修訂；但更重要的是，它包含了大量的錯誤和遺漏，其中許多直到很久以後才被發現。因此，在附錄中，有必要仔細審查第一版文本以及第二版後來修正的印次，以辨別此版本中的任何特定變更究竟是作者本意還是錯誤。在美國，修訂版文本於1967年2月27日由Houghton Mifflin出版，為三卷精裝本。該文本顯然是從1966年Allen & Unwin的三卷精裝本進行照相平版印刷的，因此與之保持一致。除了Houghton Mifflin第二版的第一印次在書名頁上標註了1967年日期外，其餘許多重印本都沒有標註日期。在此版本的最初印次（帶有1966年版權聲明）之後，版權日期在1965年被更改，以與Ballantine版中的聲明相符。這一變動給圖書館員和其他試圖理清這些版本出版順序的研究人員造成了極大的困惑。與此同時，托爾金在1966年夏天的大部分時間裡進一步修訂文本。六月，他得知任何更多的修訂都已太遲，無法納入1966年Allen & Unwin第二版中，他在日記中寫道：「但我正在努力完成我的工作（關於修訂）——我無法在它仍在我腦海中時放棄。由於這種不斷中斷思路的情況，我的所有工作都浪費了太多時間。」這是托爾金生前對文本所做的最後一次重大修訂。它們被加入到三卷精裝本Allen & Unwin第二版的第二印次（1967年）中。這些修訂本身主要包括術語的更正以及在三卷書中保持用法一致性的嘗試。托爾金在1969年的一卷本印度紙版中做了一些小改動。J.R.R.托爾金於1973年去世。他的第三個兒子兼文學遺產執行人克里斯托弗·托爾金於1974年向Allen & Unwin寄送了大量進一步的錯別字更正，主要集中在附錄和索引中，供他們在版本中使用。這些更正大多是排版上的，並與他父親在其校對本中表達的意圖相符。
x THE LORD OF THE RINGS Since 1974, Christopher Tolkien has sent additional corrections, as errors have been discovered, to the British publishers of The Lord of the Rings (Allen & Unwin, later Unwin Hyman, and now HarperCollins), who have tried to be conscientious in the impossible task of maintaining a textual integrity in whichever editions of The Lord of the Rings they have published. However, every time the text has been reset for publication in a new format (e.g. the various paperback editions published in England in the 1970s and 1980s), huge numbers of new misprints have crept in, though at times some of these errors have been observed and corrected in later printings. Still, throughout these years the three-volume British hardcover edition has retained the highest textual integrity. In the United States, the text of the Ballantine paperback has remained unchanged for more than three decades after Tolkien added his few revisions in 1966. The text in all of the Houghton Mifflin editions remained unchanged from 1967 until 1987, when Houghton Mifflin photo-offset the then current three-volume British hardcover edition in order to update the text used in their editions. In those new reprintings a number of further corrections (overseen by Christopher Tolkien) were added, and the errant Ballantine branch of revision (including the ‘Estella Bolger’ addition) was integrated into the main branch of textual descent. This method of correction involved a cutand-paste process with printed versions of the text. Beginning with the 1987 Houghton Mifflin edition, an earlier version of this ‘Note on the Text’ (dated October 1986) was added to The Lord of the Rings. This ‘Note’ has been reworked three times since then — the version dated April 1993 first appeared in 1994, and the version dated April 2002 came out later that year. The present ‘Note’ replaces and supersedes all previous versions. For the 1994 British edition published by HarperCollins, the text of The Lord of the Rings was entered into word-processing files. This next stage of textual evolution came about to allow for a greater uniformity of the text in all future editions, but with it, inevitably, came new wrinkles. Some new misreadings entered into the text, while at the same time others were fixed. In the worst instance, one line of the ring inscription in the chapter “The Shadow of the Past’ of The Fellowship of the Ring was simply dropped. Unforeseeable glitches arose in other editions when the base computerized text was transferred into page-making or typesetting programs — e.g., in one edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, the closing two sentences of “The Council of Elrond’ simply and inexplicably disappeared. Such glitches have been very much the exception, not the rule, and the text has otherwise maintained a consistency and integrity throughout its computerized evolution.
自1974年以來，克里斯托弗·托爾金（Christopher Tolkien）不斷將發現的錯誤修正，發送給《魔戒》的英國出版商（Allen & Unwin，後來是Unwin Hyman，現在是HarperCollins）。這些出版商一直努力在維護《魔戒》各版本文本完整性的不可能任務中盡職盡責。然而，每當文本為新格式出版而重新排版時（例如，1970年代和1980年代在英國出版的各種平裝本），大量新的錯印就會悄然出現，儘管有時其中一些錯誤會在後來的印刷中被發現並修正。儘管如此，這些年來，三卷本的英國精裝版一直保持著最高的文本完整性。在美國，巴蘭坦（Ballantine）平裝本的文本在托爾金於1966年加入少量修訂後，三十多年來一直未變。霍頓·米夫林（Houghton Mifflin）所有版本的文本從1967年到1987年一直未變，直到霍頓·米夫林對當時的三卷本英國精裝版進行了照相平版印刷，以更新其版本中使用的文本。在這些新的重印本中，加入了更多修正（由克里斯托弗·托爾金監督），並且將錯誤的巴蘭坦修訂分支（包括「埃斯特拉·博爾傑」的增補）整合到文本傳承的主分支中。這種修正方法涉及對文本的印刷版本進行剪貼過程。從1987年霍頓·米夫林版開始，這個「文本說明」（註明1986年10月）的早期版本被加入到《魔戒》中。此後，這份「說明」被修改了三次——1993年4月的版本於1994年首次出現，而2002年4月的版本則於同年稍後問世。本「說明」取代並廢止了所有以前的版本。對於哈珀柯林斯（HarperCollins）於1994年出版的英國版，《魔戒》的文本被輸入到文字處理文件中。文本演變的下一個階段是為了讓所有未來版本中的文本具有更高的一致性，但隨之而來的，不可避免地出現了新的問題。一些新的誤讀進入了文本，同時其他一些錯誤則被修正。在最糟糕的情況下，《魔戒現身》中「過去的陰影」一章裡，魔戒銘文的一行文字竟然被簡單地遺漏了。當基礎電腦化文本被轉移到排版或字體排版程序時，其他版本中出現了不可預見的故障——例如，在《魔戒現身》的一個版本中，「埃爾隆會議」的最後兩句話就這樣莫名其妙地消失了。這些故障大多是例外，而非通則，文本在整個電腦化演變過程中，仍然保持了其一致性和完整性。