MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
Tolkien and The Silmarillion is a short memoir by Clyde S. Kilby, professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois and founder of the Marion E. Wade Center for the study of the Inklings. It was published in 1976 by Harold Shaw in Wheaton, then in 1977 by Lion Publishing in Britain.
In the summer of 1966 Kilby stayed in Oxford to help Tolkien put The Silmarillion in order, reading the manuscripts and meeting him regularly. The book recalls those conversations and gives a portrait of the man at home and at work, along with what Kilby learned of the unpublished mythology a year before Christopher Tolkien finally brought it out.
Clyde Kilby recalls the summer of 1966 he spent in Oxford helping Tolkien with the manuscripts of The Silmarillion.