Charles Noad
File:Charles_Noad.jpg meeting at Keble College, Oxford in 1992]]
Charles E. Noad was a programmer, Tolkien scholar, and a long-standing member of the Tolkien Society, which he helped to found.
Life
Charles Noad was born in 1947. He worked at Imperial College, London as a computer programmer.{{cite web |title=Obituary: Charles Noad |url=https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2023/07/obituary-charles-noad/ |publisher=The Tolkien Society |access-date=7 July 2024 |date=18 July 2023}}
A Tolkien fan, he was involved in the work of the Tolkien Society, which he helped to found, for over 50 years, making him its longest-standing member; he served as its bibliographer and photographer, and belonged to its London local group, the Northfarthing Smial. The society described his essay "On the Construction of The Silmarillion" as "critically important"; it was published in the 2000 scholarly collection Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter. His friendship with Christopher Tolkien led to his proofreading several Middle-earth books including The History of Middle-earth.
Several Tolkien scholars knew, corresponded with, and exchanged books with Noad for 40 years or more. Douglas A. Anderson wrote that Noad's "eagle-eye as a proof-reader was legendary."{{cite web |last1=Anderson |first1=Douglas A. |author1-link=Douglas A. Anderson |title=R.I.P. Charles E. Noad (1947-2023) |url=https://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/2023/07/rip-charles-e-noad-1947-2023.html |website=Tolkien and Fantasy |access-date=7 July 2024}}
David Bratman described Noad's "On the Construction of The Silmarillion" as a "fascinating and well-researched and -argued" essay on what J. R. R. Tolkien would probably have done to that book, making it "more heterogeneous" than the volume edited by Christopher Tolkien and published a few months after Noad's essay.{{cite web |last1=Bratman |first1=David |author1-link=David Bratman |title=Charles E. Noad |url=https://kalimac.livejournal.com/1401176.html |publisher=David Bratman |access-date=7 July 2024 |date=14 July 2023}} John D. Rateliff called Noad "the first fellow Tolkien scholar I met". Rateliff described Noad's influence on Tolkien research as "powerful but subtle", in particular on the 12-volume set of The History of Middle-earth. He described Noad's proofreading of Rateliff's The History of the Hobbit as "meticulous".{{cite web |last1=Rateliff |first1=John D. |author1-link=John D. Rateliff |title=Charles Noad |url=http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2023/07/charles-noad.html |website=Sacnoth's Scriptorium |access-date=7 July 2024 |date=13 July 2023}}
Works
- 1977 The Trees, the Jewels and the Rings: A Discursive Enquiry Into Things Little Known on Middle-earth (44 pages). The Tolkien Society. {{isbn|978-090552001-8}}.
- 2000 "On the Construction of The Silmarillion", in Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth. Greenwood Press. {{isbn|978-0-313-30530-6}}
References
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{{J. R. R. Tolkien}}
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