Note on the Text

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》常被誤稱為三部曲，但它實際上是一部單獨的小說，由六卷書及附錄組成，有時會以三冊的形式出版。第一冊《魔戒現身》於1954年7月29日由倫敦的喬治·艾倫與昂溫出版社在英國出版；同年10月21日，波士頓的霍頓·米夫林公司也推出了美國版。在製作第一冊的過程中，托爾金經歷了一個對他而言持續不斷的問題：印刷錯誤和排字工的失誤，包括一些出於善意而對他時而特異的用字所做的「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（對托爾金而言「最糟的」）將 elven 改為 elfin。在像《魔戒》這樣一部包含自創語言和精心建構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與欣賞——而托爾金從很早期就擁有許多這樣的讀者。甚至在包含大量迄今未揭露的自創語言和書寫系統資訊的第三冊出版之前，托爾金就收到了許多讀者用這些系統寫的信，此外還有大量關於其用法細節的詢問。第二冊《雙城奇謀》於1954年11月11日在英國出版，1955年4月21日在美國出版。與此同時，托爾金努力遵守他在第一冊前言中的承諾：第三冊將會附上「一份姓名與奇特詞語的索引」。按照原計畫，這份索引將包含大量關於語言的詞源學資訊，特別是關於精靈語，並附有大量詞彙。結果這卻成了第三冊延遲出版的主要原因，最終該冊根本沒有任何索引，只有出版商對其缺席的致歉。因為托爾金在為第一、二冊建立索引後，認為其篇幅過大，因此成本將會是毀滅性的，於是便放棄了這項工作。第三冊《王者再臨》最終於1955年10月20日在英國問世，1956年1月5日在美國問世。隨著第三冊的出現，《魔戒》以其完整形態出版，其第一版的文本幾乎保持不變

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》有十年未曾變動。托爾金曾做過一些小修正，但更多錯誤卻在1954年12月《魔戒現身》的第二版印刷中悄然出現。當時印刷商在第一次印刷後拆散了活字版，卻在未通知作者或出版社的情況下重新排版。這些錯誤包括對原始印刷文本的曲解——也就是說，有些詞語和片語在上下文中讀起來似乎沒問題，但卻偏離了托爾金最初寫作和出版時的用詞。1965年，由於當時在美國出現的版權問題，一家美國平裝書公司出版了一套未經授權且不支付版稅的《魔戒》。為了這個由 Ace Books 出版的新版本，敘事文本被重新排版，因此引入了新的印刷錯誤；然而，其附錄是從精裝版影印而來，因此與精裝版保持一致。托爾金於是著手對文本進行首次修訂，以便一個新修訂的授權版本能成功地在美國市場上競爭。這個首次修訂的文本於1965年10月由 Ballantine Books 根據 Houghton Mifflin 的授權在美國以平裝本形式出版。除了文本本身的修訂，托爾金還用一篇新的前言取代了原來的。他很高興能刪除原來的序言；在他的校樣本上，他如此寫道：「將真實的個人事務與故事的『機制』混為一談，是個嚴重的錯誤」。托爾金還為序章增補了內容，並增加了一份索引——但並非第一版所承諾的詳細人名索引，而僅是一份只有人名和頁碼的陽春索引。此外，此時附錄也進行了大幅修訂。托爾金在1966年1月下旬收到了 Ballantine 版本，並在2月初的日記中記載，他「花了數小時研究 Ballantine 版本的附錄，發現的錯誤比最初預期的要多」。此後不久，他向 Ballantine 提交了少量針對附錄的進一步修訂，其中包括在附錄C的家譜中為梅里雅達克增加了妻子「埃斯泰拉·博爾格」這一眾所周知的增補。這些修訂大多在第三冊的第三次和第四次印刷（1966年6月和8月）中陸續加入，而且並非總能被正確插入（從而導致文本進一步混亂），卻不知為何從未進入英國三卷精裝版的主要修訂序列中，長期以來成為了異常之處。托爾金曾就《魔戒》的修訂寫道，或許他未能將筆記整理好；這個出錯的修訂分支，很可能就是那種混亂的一個例子——無論是他的筆記本身，還是他的出版商未能極其精確地遵循其指示。

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.

關於文本的說明 ix 修訂後的文本最初於1966年10月27日由艾倫與安文出版社（Allen & Unwin）在英國以三卷精裝本「第二版」的形式出版。但問題再次出現。雖然托爾金寄往美國的文本修訂稿本身可用於新的英國版，但他對附錄的大量修訂在被納入巴蘭汀版（Ballantine edition）後卻遺失了。艾倫與安文出版社被迫使用首次在巴蘭汀版中出版的內容來重新排版附錄。這不僅未包含托爾金寄給巴蘭汀的第二批小幅修訂；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，在附錄部分，必須仔細審查第一版文本以及後來經過校訂的第二版印本，才能辨別此版本中的任何特定變更是出自作者之手還是錯誤所致。 在美國，修訂後的文本於1967年2月27日由霍頓·米夫林出版社（Houghton Mifflin）以三卷精裝本的形式出版。此文本顯然是從1966年艾倫與安文的三卷精裝本照相平版印刷而來，因此與其內容一致。除了霍頓·米夫林第二版的首次印刷本在標題頁上有1967年的日期外，其後眾多的重印本均未標明日期。在此版本的初次印刷（其版權頁註明為1966年）之後，版權日期被改為1965年，以與巴蘭汀版的聲明相符。這一變更給試圖理清這些版本出版順序的圖書館員和其他研究人員造成了極大的困惑。 與此同時，托爾金在1966年夏天花了大量時間進一步修訂文本。六月時，他得知任何進一步的修訂都為時已晚，無法納入1966年艾倫與安文的第二版中，他在日記中寫道：「但我仍試圖完成我的工作［指修訂］——當這一切都還在我腦中時，我無法放下它。我所有的工作都因這思緒線索不斷被打斷而浪費了太多時間。」這是托爾金在世時親自對文本進行的最後一次大規模修訂。這些修訂被加入艾倫與安文三卷精裝第二版的第二次印刷（1967年）中。修訂內容本身主要包括修正專有名詞，並試圖使三卷書中的用法保持一致。托爾金在1969年的單卷本聖經紙版（India paper edition）中做了一些小更動。 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，克里斯多福·托爾金，於1974年將大量進一步的印刷錯誤更正（主要在附錄和索引中）寄給艾倫與安文，供其在版本中使用。這些更正大多是排印上的，並且符合他父親在自己的校對本中所表達的意圖。

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，克里斯多福·托爾金在發現錯誤後，便會將額外的校訂內容寄給《魔戒》的英國出版商（Allen & Unwin，後來的 Unwin Hyman，現為 HarperCollins）。這些出版商一直盡心盡力，試圖在他們出版的任何《魔戒》版本中維持文本的完整性，這是一項幾乎不可能的任務。然而，每當為了新版式（例如1970與1980年代在英國出版的各種平裝本）而重新排版時，大量新的印刷錯誤便會悄悄潛入，儘管有時其中一些錯誤會在後續的印刷中被發現並修正。即便如此，這些年來，三卷精裝的英國版始終保持著最高的文本完整性。在美國，自1966年托爾金加入少量修訂後，Ballantine 平裝版的文本三十多年來未曾改變。所有 Houghton Mifflin 版本的文本從1967年到1987年也保持不變，直到1987年，Houghton Mifflin 採用照相平版印刷當時最新的三卷英國精裝版，以更新他們所用版本的文本。在這些新的重印版中，加入了更多（由克里斯多福·托爾金監督的）校訂，而那個偏離正軌的 Ballantine 修訂分支（包括增添「艾絲黛拉·博爾格」一事）也被整合回文本傳承的主線中。這種校訂方法涉及對文本印刷版本進行剪貼處理。從1987年的 Houghton Mifflin 版本開始，《魔戒》中加入了一個早期版本的「關於文本的說明」（日期為1986年10月）。此後，這份「說明」被修改了三次——1993年4月版於1994年首次出現，而2002年4月版則在同年稍晚問世。目前的這份「說明」取代並廢止了所有先前的版本。為了1994年由 HarperCollins 出版的英國版，《魔戒》的文本被輸入到文書處理檔案中。文本演進的下一階段是為了讓未來所有版本的文本有更高的一致性，但無可避免地，也隨之帶來了新的小問題。一些新的誤讀進入了文本，同時其他錯誤則被修正。在最糟的情況下，《魔戒現身》中「過往的陰影」一章裡的一行魔戒銘文就這樣被漏掉了。當基礎的電腦化文本被轉移到頁面製作或排版程式時，其他版本也出現了無法預見的小故障——例如，在某一版的《魔戒現身》中，「愛隆的會議」最後兩句竟莫名其妙地消失了。這類小故障純屬例外，並非常態，在整個電腦化演進過程中，文本在其他方面都保持了一致性與完整性。