# Making of Silmarillion



## Altaranto (Dec 31, 2022)

In many popular resources, like wikipedia, says that Cristopher, while he was editing and compiled "Silmarillion", he cannot do it perfect because he didnt have access to some original drafts, materials, manuscripts, to full body of text of his Father. But, why? To me thats sound very strange, how his son didnt have access to his Fathers works. And there is no more information. And, what kind of this texts they could be? Can we hope someday to see them published? Or, may be thats some of the earlier works, thats later was in his access (may be some of HoMe material)? I undestand, that some of Tolkien texts are in rights of some libraries or some private person, but to know that Cristopher cannot fully understand and editing "Silmarillion", and that we also cannot read this important texts, because of that, thats very... distresingly...


----------



## d4rk3lf (Dec 31, 2022)

My guess is that it's just lost stuff, and that even Tolkien himself didn't had it.
It's hard to keep every single paper or napkin you wrote something in it.
Some as well may be damaged due to time passage to the state that is unreadable.... well, kind of Book of Balin in Moria.


----------



## Altaranto (Dec 31, 2022)

d4rk3lf said:


> My guess is that it's just lost stuff, and that even Tolkien himself didn't had it.
> It's hard to keep every single paper or napkin you wrote something in it.
> Some as well may be damaged due to time passage to the state that is unreadable.... well, kind of Book of Balin in Moria.


May be thats it really some just truly lost materials, or something like with the one of the firsts drafts of "Silmarillion", which Tolkien sent to some person, and due to some situations it was lost, something like that with other materials


----------



## Elbereth Vala Varda (Dec 31, 2022)

The Silmarillion was first written in the trenches or while he was recovering from the war, so I highly doubt all of it was just at his fingertips. I assume many drafts were made and remade, but most likely the original pieces were either lost, or just not really worth keeping as they were too aged, or simply were lost. Tolkien did his writing on paper, which can make it really hard to keep track of everything. We must remember, although we consider his works priceless in value, and wish that every word he ever wrote was given to us to read, Tolkien would not have thought of himself that highly, and would have treated his drafts much like you or I would.


----------

