I love Tolkien. I’m just finishing the audio book where the Hobbits return to the Shire. I’ve been falling asleep to it the last few weeks.
I remember being very upset when feminism arose because I believed EQUALITY meant just that. That men and women both needed to have freedom to act as they chose. I was raised in a time when I couldn’t give Zeiss Planetarium lectures because I was a woman. When I couldn’t use a female narrator on a computer movie. It was always economic excuses. A woman couldn’t be an authority figure and audiences wouldn’t accept one and people wouldn’t buy the video with a female narrator. But it quickly became clear that they meant for women to dominate, not reach equality. That infuriated me and I lost all interest in feminism that day.
I went to a convention that had Marion Zimmer Bradley as a speaker. She turned out to be a flaming feminist who insulted a meek young man who wanted to join in one of her workshops meant just for women. That was horrendous.
VERY glad to hear that you recuperated from that bad situation. Remember hearing Adele Davis talk. Unfortunately, she also insulted a questioner. Not a nice lady.
You may know this already, but:
Tolkien wrote The Silmarillion - the First Age (and Akallabeth - the Second Age) as feigned histories of a world to provide a place for his invented languages to exist.
It was never published while he lived.
Then he wrote The Hobbit, set in the Third Age, for his kids, and it got published.
Next he wrote the trilogy, set shortly after The Hobbit, at the end of the Third Age.
It was modestly published in hardback in the 50s, but did not become a phenomenon until the 60s, when its paperback edition became the campus rage.
The history in the chapter, The Council of Elrond, harks back to the early works.
They were eventually edited and published by his son, Christopher, after his father died.
Someone put together a master poly-geneology of the major characters and their bloodlines. A friend sent me this link a week ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/8q0goj/definitive_family_tree_of_the_tolkien_legendarium/
It has only one glaring omission that I can see: Glorfindel, a high elf of Elrond’s household, obviously related to Galadriel (Elrond’s mother-in-law, and Arwen’s grandmother), since he is First-Born and blonde (only Galadriel’s close kin among the Noldor are blonde, since they are of the House of Finarfin, and thus part Vanyar). He features prominently in The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, and the Appendices.