Sandyman’s buscuit factory
26 March 2022 | Sacnoth’s Scriptorium | John D. Rateliff
So, here at the end of my first week (of two) at the Archives, I once again marvel at the LotR manuscript collection. Even after so much time, reading closely through variant versions reveal how differently things cd have turned out at so many points, making the familiar text become strange and new again.
For example, consider two extremely minor details from the end of Plot Note F.
On a penciled scrap of paper placed at the end of PN F we are told that Frodo and Sam in the end come back to find the Shire ruined and the Sandyman house a biscuit factory.…
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So, here at the end of my first week (of two) at the Archives, I once again marvel at the LotR manuscript collection. Even after so much time, reading closely through variant versions reveal how differently things cd have turned out at so many points, making the familiar text become strange and new again.
For example, consider two extremely minor details from the end of Plot Note F.
On a penciled scrap of paper placed at the end of PN F we are told that Frodo and Sam in the end come back to find the Shire ruined and the Sandyman house a biscuit factory.
So, why a biscuit factory? Remember that for English English ‘biscuit’ usually means what in American English we call a cookie. So decades before the Keebler elfs we find here a passing glimpse of little people going into the cookie industry. If this had been written down two decades later I’d suspect it was linked to the little elf-queen on Noakes’s Cake in SMITH OF WOOTON MAJOR, but the long gap of years between makes that seem a stretch.
Is biscuit chosen here for some specific reason, so drive home a particular point? Or is this a random point that briefly popped into Tolkien’s head as he was jotting down some notes re. possibilities in the parts of the story he hadn’t gotten to yet?
Have to say I haven’t got a clue.
–John R.
–current reading: O’Malley’s THE ROOK