Inside J.R.R. Tolkien’s Notebooks, a Glimpse of the Master Philologist at Work – The New York Times

Inside J.R.R. Tolkien’s Notebooks, a Glimpse of the Master Philologist at Work – The New York Times

As Carl F. Hostetter writes in an essay in Catherine McIlwaine’s “Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth,” his was a labor “performed and preserved on thousands of manuscript pages containing Tolkien’s minutely detailed description and unceasing elaboration (and revision) of not just one but rather of a family of invented languages, which can be collectively called the Elvish tongues.”

Wow. I knew Tolkien had written an entire language for the elves in his novels but I had no idea went to this deep a level of detail.

(via Gannon Burgett)