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The History of The Lord of the Rings
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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- The War of the Ring redirects here. For the fictional military conflict, see War of the Ring.
The History of The Lord of the Rings is a 4-volume work by Christopher Tolkien that documents the process of J. R. R. Tolkien's writing of The Lord of the Rings. The History is also numbered as volumes 6 to 9 of The History of Middle-earth. Some information concerning the appendices and a soon-abandoned sequel to the novel can also be found in volume 12, The Peoples of Middle-earth.
The volumes include:
- (HoME 6) The Return of the Shadow (1988)
- (HoME 7) The Treason of Isengard (1989)
- (HoME 8) The War of the Ring (1990)
- (HoME 9) Sauron Defeated (1992) (Also published as The End of the Third Age, see below)
The titles of the volumes derive from the discarded names for the separate books of The Lord of the Rings. J. R. R. Tolkien conceived the latter as a single volume comprising six "books" plus extensive appendices, but the original publisher split the work into three, publishing two books per volume with the appendices included into the third. The titles proposed by Tolkien for separate books were: The Return of the Shadow or The Ring Sets Out; The Fellowship of the Ring or The Ring Goes South; The Treason of Isengard; The Journey of the Ringbearers or The Ring Goes East; The War of the Ring; and The End of the Third Age or The Return of the King.
Three of the titles of the volumes of The History of The Lord of the Rings were also used as book titles for the 7-volume edition of The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the Shadow for Book I, The Treason of Isengard for Book III and The War of the Ring for Book V.
The first volume encompasses three initial stages of composition, or as Christopher Tolkien entitled them, "phases", and finishes with the Fellowship of the Ring entering the Mines of Moria. The second continues to the meeting with Théoden king of Rohan, and includes the discussions of the original map of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age and of the evolution of Cirth. The War of the Ring continues to the opening of the Black Gate. The last volume finishes the story, featuring also the rejected Epilogue, in which Sam answers his children's questions.
Sauron Defeated also includes The Notion Club Papers (a time-travel story related to Númenor), a draft of the Drowning of Anadûnê and the only extant account of the Adûnaic language. However, some paperback editions, entitled in this case The End of the Third Age, include only The Lord of the Rings material, being only a third of the original edition.[1]
The original idea was to release The History of The Lord of the Rings in three volumes, not four. When Treason of Isengard first was published (in paperback) HoME 8 was named Sauron Defeated and was supposed to be the last part.
- ^ Amazon.co.uk: Edition by Harper Collins; Edition by Houghton Mifflin
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| Bibliography | |
| Fiction | Songs for the Philologists (1936) • The Hobbit or There and Back Again (1937) • Leaf by Niggle (1945) • The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1945) • Farmer Giles of Ham (1949) • The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (1953) • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), The Return of the King (1955) • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962) • The Road Goes Ever On (1967) • Tree and Leaf (1964) • The Tolkien Reader (1966) • Smith of Wootton Major (1967) |
| Posthumous Fiction | The Father Christmas Letters (1976) • The Silmarillion (1977) • Unfinished Tales (1980) • Bilbo's Last Song (1990) • The History of Middle-earth (12 Volumes) (1983–1996) • Roverandom (1998) • The Children of Húrin (2007) • The History of The Hobbit (2007) |
| Academic | A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English text, 1925) • Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (1925) • The Devil's Coach Horses (1925) • Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad (1929) • The Name 'Nodens' (1932) • Sigelwara Land parts I and II, in Medium Aevum (1932-34) • Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale (1934) • Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1937) • The Reeve's Tale: version prepared for recitation at the 'summer diversions' (1939) • On Fairy-Stories (1939) • Sir Orfeo (1944) • Ofermod and Beorhtnoth's Death (1953) • Middle English "Losenger": Sketch of an etymological and semantic enquiry (1953) • Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962) • English and Welsh (1963) • Introduction to Tree and Leaf (1964) • Contributions to the Jerusalem Bible (as translator and lexicographer) (1966) • Tolkien on Tolkien (autobiographical) (1966) |
| Posthumous Academic | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (Modern English translations, 1975) • Finn and Hengest (1982) • The Monsters and the Critics (1983) • Beowulf and the Critics (2002) |