E.V. Gordon

From Tolkien Gateway

Eric Valentine Gordon (14 February 189629 July 1938) was a Canadian philologist who worked alongside J.R.R. Tolkien on various scholastic works and published books.

Early life[edit | edit source]

Gordon was educated at Victoria College and McGill University. He also attended University College at Oxford University (1920), and later taught at Leeds University (1922-1931).[1]

Works with Tolkien[edit | edit source]

While Tolkien was teaching at Leeds University, Gordon had come to Leeds and Tolkien wrote in his diary "Eric Valentine Gordon has come and got firmly established and is my devoted friend and pal."[2] Gordon worked with him on A Middle English Vocabulary and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

The two also began the Viking Club where they would read Old Icelandic sagas (and drink a lot of beer) with students and faculty, and invent original Anglo-Saxon songs. A collection of these was privately published as the book Songs for the Philologists.[3]

In 1930, he married Ida Pickles, a former student and fellow philologist and later he taught at Manchester University (1932-1938).[1]

While Gordon died in 1938, yet another two works, to which Tolkien contributed, were published posthumously by Ida, who completed and revised them. The first was Pearl (1953; Tolkien contributed to this book with a section, "Form and Purpose", in the introduction) and the second was The Seafarer (1960).[4][5]

Bibliography, selected[edit | edit source]

Books
Poems
As contributor

See also[edit | edit source]

External links[edit | edit source]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Jane Chance (2003), Tolkien the Medievalist
  2. Humphrey Carpenter (2000), J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin, page 111
  3. Humphrey Carpenter (2000), J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin, page 112
  4. Humphrey Carpenter (2000), J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, New York: Houghton Mifflin, page 145
  5. Verlyn Flieger (2001). A Question of Time, p. 262