A first preview is available where we see that HarperCollins has chosen to intersperse the letters and give them a number in the form of a number + letter.
https://preview.aer.io/The_Letters_of_J_R_R_Tolkien-NjAyNTY2

I still think the Letters should have been renumbered, but happy that we at last know the numbering scheme.

Trotter wrote:

I still think the Letters should have been renumbered, but happy that we at last know the numbering scheme.

Heathen! I'm glad they have not renumbered everything, that would make existing and future citations an abysmal mess. Not a fan of 8, 8a, 8b, 8c, 9 as it makes the three "new" letters appear to be directly relating to number 8, but I am the first to admit there's not a better solution.

Speaking from experience, it is not possible to come up with a numbering scheme that is informative, and also resilient to future insertions that don't break your scheme. And with new Tolkien letters being 'discovered' all the time, future insertions are inevitable.

I agree, but what about future letters in a maybe future edition ? Would they be numbered 8aa, 8ab, and so on ?

Druss wrote:

I agree, but what about future letters in a maybe future edition ? Would they be numbered 8aa, 8ab, and so on ?

My personal opinion only -

This revised letters edition is a special case, as it is finally publishing the original intended edition from Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien. If there ever is a second volume of letters, it will almost certainly be completely new letters only, not this edition with even more letters added to it. So were I the editor, I would start Volume 2 with letter number 355 and go up from there, with the second volume using internal chronological order, not trying to interweave the dates of vol 2 letters into the numbering scheme used in vol 1.

When we started this site's "Guide to Tolkien Letters", we knew of all of these issues, and knew that the Revised Letters was coming but not what letters would be in it, nor what the numbering scheme would be. So we ignored the problem and didn't try to have any coherent numbering scheme. The system is built to support multiple numbering schemes already though:

Current TCG letter number (meaningless) eg https://www.tolkienguide.com/guide/letters/46
Original Carpenter numbers (L1-L354) eg https://www.tolkienguide.com/guide/letters/L46
Revised Carpenter numbers (L1-L354 with letters supported) [to be accessible when the book is released]

Future numbering schemes as desired/needed are ready to be layered on.

As a side note for anyone interested - you can use shorthand when discussing letters here, you don't have to find and copy/paste (or hand write) the full link.

#TCGLetter46 => Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to Edith Bratt • 3 November 1913 (#46)

#Letter46 => Carpenter's Letter #46 (J.R.R. Tolkien to R.W. Chapman, 26 November 1941)

I agree with Urulókë, Trotter is indeed a heathen 😅

But in all seriousness, I believe this was the correct way to do it, or else Tolkien's famous letter #131 could have become Tolkien's much less famous letter about his reply being late, apologies for which he would note!

And all things considered, in 20 years no one will remember these numberings as they will all be using the TCG Guide to Tolkien's Letters system anyway 😁

onthetrail wrote:

I agree with Urulókë, Trotter is indeed a heathen 😅

But in all seriousness, I believe this was the correct way to do it, or else Tolkien's famous letter #131 could have become Tolkien's much less famous letter about his reply being late, apologies for which he would note!

And all things considered, in 20 years no one will remember these numberings as they will all be using the TCG Guide to Tolkien's Letters system anyway 😁

Off-topic, it seems you haven't added unidentified letters yet? Specifically, I mean the 1968 letter in private collection about Ents and Tom B, quoted 4 times in RC (and the last quote on RC p392 seems like a possible slip, being almost identical with _Letters_ p. 335).

zionius wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

I agree with Urulókë, Trotter is indeed a heathen 😅

But in all seriousness, I believe this was the correct way to do it, or else Tolkien's famous letter #131 could have become Tolkien's much less famous letter about his reply being late, apologies for which he would note!

And all things considered, in 20 years no one will remember these numberings as they will all be using the TCG Guide to Tolkien's Letters system anyway 😁

Off-topic, it seems you haven't added unidentified letters yet? Specifically, I mean the 1968 letter in private collection about Ents and Tom B, quoted 4 times in RC (and the last quote on RC p392 seems like a possible slip, being almost identical with _Letters_ p. 335).

Thank you zionius, we have not missed it precisely but have not yet picked through the RC page-by-page. There are other instances which we have probably missed entirely or are even blind to them so do keep the information coming on stuff like this. It is a great help to us, thank you.

I'm certainly well set up for our review, published on Thursday and our livestream on Friday