The Digital Tolkien Project now has a paragraph-based citation system for The Hobbit derived directly from the marked-up version of the text and checked against previous work by others.

Back in 2018, I generated an initial paragraph-based citation system for The Hobbit based on my initial markup of the text in discussion with Paul O’Rear. At the time, I did an initial comparison with L. F. S. Alden’s Paragraph Index to The Hobbit but in the last month, I’ve been working with Ugo Truffelli to align my citation system with his own work and we’ve now reached a consensus. In this post, I’ll go through the initial discrepencies between Alden, Tuffelli and myself and discuss how Ugo and I resolved them (sometimes by me changing the XML markup).

Issue 1. (Chapter 2)

Alden treats these as separate paragraphs:

02.011 "We have the honour to remain
02.012 "Yours deeply
02.013 "Thorin & Co."

whereas I currently have that marked up as one paragraph with line breaks:

02.009 {lt.p} Thorin and Company to Burglar
02.010 {lt.p} Thinking it unnecessary to disturb
02.011 {lt.c} We have the honour to
02.012 {p}    That leaves you just ten

Some markup alternatives were discussed in an earlier blog post.

On the one hand, the closer is a single sentence and like the lines in a stanza (which we treat as a single block) NOT multiple blocks.

However, there are two compelling arguments for treating the closer as three blocks:

  1. the print (2007 and others) repeat the opening quotation marks each time (indication of a new paragraph)
  2. in LOTR Book 1 Chapter 10 the closer in the letter from Gandalf is treated as multiple blocks by LRC (and by extension our citation scheme)

I’ve now made this change and the result is:

02.008 {p}       This is what he read:
02.009 {lt.p}    Thorin and Company to Burglar
02.010 {lt.p}    Thinking it unnecessary to disturb
02.011 {lt.cl.p} We have the honour to
02.012 {lt.cl.p} Yours deeply
02.013 {lt.cl.p} Thorin & Co.
02.014 {p}       That leaves you just ten

Issue 2. (Chapter 2)

Alden jumps from

02.106 "Dawn take you all,"
to
02.107 "Excellent!" said Gandalf,

without the intervening

And there they stand to this day

The 2007 print version follows Alden. The reason for the break in our text is just an image. This seems an almost arbitrary placement on the part of the Kindle book. The 2007 print version puts the image well before this paragraph.

I’ve now made this change and the result is:

02.106 {p}       Dawn take you all, and
02.107 {p}       Excellent! said Gandalf, as he

Issue 3. (Chapter 5)

I think we all have

05.040 {lg}   A box without hinges, key,
05.041 {p}    he asked to gain time,

but I bring it up here as Ugo did in relation to how we handle Issue 4 below as well as potentially Issue 1.

Issue 4. (Chapter 5)

Alden jumps from

05.056 Poor Bilbo sat in the dark thinking of all the hor
to
05.057 Bilbo was saved by pure luck. For that of course w

without the intervening

“Time! Time!”

I propose this should remain a separate block:

05.056 {p}    Poor Bilbo sat in the
05.057 {qt}   Time! Time!
05.058 {p}    Bilbo was saved by pure

Truffelli agrees with us here. No action required on our part.

Issue 5. (Chapter 6)

Alden has

06.077 Burn, burn tree and fern!
06.078 Bake and toast ’em, fry and roast ’em!
06.079 And with that Ya hoy!

but in our previous markup, the “Bake and toast…” is considered part of the previous grouping.

“Burn, burn tree and fern!” is the first line of a poem and “Bake and toast ’em, fry and roast ’em!” is the fifth line.

There is only one <lg> in our markup and so all 15 lines are considered the same “paragraph” whereas Alden splits the poem into 4+11 lines.

Interestingly in the 2007 print version there is a PAGE BREAK here so it’s ambiguous. But the Kindle version makes no attempt to mark a stanza break here.

Truffelli has confirmed (agreeding with Alden) there should be a break and I have now corrected this.

06.077 {lg}   Burn, burn tree and fern!
06.078 {lg}   Bake and toast ’em, fry
06.079 {p}    And with that Ya hoy!

Issue 6. (Chapter 10)

Alden jumps from

10.035 The King beneath the mountains,
to
10.036 So they sang,

without the intervening

His crown shall be upholden,
The woods shall wave on mountains
The streams shall run in gladness,

This (including 10.035) is all verse. Alden has treated the entire poem as a single paragraph whereas my XML (following the Kindle edition) splits it into 4 stanzas.

The blank lines in the 2007 print version favour our markup over Alden’s breakdown.

So we have:

10.035 {lg}      The King beneath the mountains,
10.036 {lg}      His crown shall be upholden,
10.037 {lg}      The woods shall wave on
10.038 {lg}      The streams shall run in
10.039 {p}       So they sang, or very

Truffelli agrees with us here. No action required on our part.

Issue 7. (Chapter 12)

Alden actually has the same number of paragraphs as us, just missed using the number 12.088 (i.e 12.087 is followed by 12.089 in Alden’s index)

We have:

12.087 {p}       So Bilbo told them all
12.088 {p}       Well, well! It cannot be
12.089 {p}       That turned the conversation, and

Truffelli and I have the same citations here. No action required on our part.

Issue 8. (Chapter 13)

Truffelli has:

13.025 - ‘Thorin! Balin! Oin! Gloin!
13.026 - Faintly the dwarves heard his small cries,

but I had:

13.025 {p}    Thorin! Balin! Oin! Gloin! Fili!
13.026 {p}    The light’s gone out! Someone
13.027 {p}    Faintly the dwarves heard his

Looking at the 2007 print, I think Truffelli is correct and I (and Alden and possibly the Kindle edition too) are wrong.

I’ve now updated this to:

13.025 {p}       Thorin! Balin! Oin! Gloin! Fili!
13.026 {p}       Faintly the dwarves heard his

Issue 9. (Chapter 19)

Alden has

19.013 Sing we now softly, and dreams let us weave him!
19.014 Sigh no more Pine, till the wind of the morn!
19.015 “Well, Merry People!” said Bilbo looking out. “Wha

but we don’t have “Sigh no more…”, treating the last <lg> as 8 lines, not 4+4 like Alden.

In other words, we have

19.013 {lg}      Sing we now softly, and
19.014 {p}       Well, Merry People! said Bilbo

The 8-line grouping agrees with the 2007 printed version but it is possible it’s a mistake and the poem was meant to have stanzas of consistently 4 lines. This may be a case of Alden siding with the 1951 edition against the 2007.

But Truffelli agrees with us. No action required on our part.

Issue 10. (Chapter 19)

Alden has

19.029 Roads go ever ever on,
19.030 Over snow by winter sown,
19.031 Roads go ever ever on
19.032 Eyes that fire and sword have seen

but we don’t have “Over snow by winter sown,” or “Eyes that fire and sword have seen”.

19.027 {p}       As all things come to
19.028 {lg}      Roads go ever ever on,
19.029 {lg}      Roads go ever ever on
19.030 {p}       Gandalf looked at him. My

Alden has treated this poem as 4 stanzas of 4 lines each whereas as we (and the 2007 printed version) treat it as a poem of 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. Again, this may be a 1951/2007 discrepancy.

Truffelli agrees with us. No action required on our part.

Hobbit Citation System Index

I’ve tentatively made the citation system index available at https://digitaltolkien.com/data/hobbit-citation-system.txt