The History of The Lord of the Rings

The History of The Lord of the Rings

The cover of the paperback edition of The Return of the Shadow
Editor	Christopher Tolkien
Author	J. R. R. Tolkien
Cover artist	Roger Garland (paperbacks) John Howe (paperbacks)
Language	English
Series	The History of Middle-earth
Release number	6, 7, 8, 9
Subject	Tolkien's legendarium
Genre	High fantasy Literary analysis
Publisher	George Allen & Unwin (UK)
Publication date	1988 (The Return of the Shadow) 1989 (The Treason of Isengard) 1990 (The War of the Ring) 1992 (Sauron Defeated)
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (hardback and paperback)
Pages	512 (The Return of the Shadow) 512 (The Treason of Isengard) 496 (The War of the Ring) 496 (Sauron Defeated)
ISBN	978-0261102248 (The Return of the Shadow) ISBN 978-0261102200 (The Treason of Isengard) ISBN 978-0261102231 (The War of the Ring) ISBN 978-0261103054 (Sauron Defeated)
Preceded by	The Lost Road and Other Writings
Followed by	Morgoth's Ring

The History of The Lord of the Rings is a four-volume work by Christopher Tolkien published between 1988 and 1992 that documents his father's process of constructing The Lord of the Rings. The History is also numbered as volumes six to nine of The History of Middle-earth ("HoME").

The volumes are:

1. (HoME 6) The Return of the Shadow (1988)
2. (HoME 7) The Treason of Isengard (1989)
3. (HoME 8) The War of the Ring (1990)
4. (HoME 9) Sauron Defeated (1992)^[a]

The first volume of The History encompasses three early phases of composition, including what Tolkien later called "the crucial chapter" which sets up the central plot, "The Shadow of the Past".^{[T 1]} It finishes at the point where the Company of the Ring enter the Mines of Moria.

The second volume continues to the meeting with Théoden king of Rohan, and includes the invention and evolution of Lothlórien and Galadriel; plans for Frodo and Sam's progress to Mordor; the creation and development of Treebeard, the Ents, and Fangorn; discussions of the original map of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age; and the evolution of Cirth in an appendix.

The third volume, The War of the Ring continues to the opening of the Black Gate.

The last volume reaches the end of the narrative, and features the rejected "Epilogue", in which Sam answers his children's questions. It includes The Notion Club Papers (a time-travel story related to Númenor), a draft of the Drowning of Anadûnê (that led to Akallabêth), and the only extant account of Tolkien's constructed language Adûnaic.

Some paperback editions of the fourth volume, retitled The End of the Third Age, include only the materials that relate to The Lord of the Rings.^[b]

The original idea was to release The History of The Lord of the Rings in three volumes, not four. When The Treason of Isengard was first published in paperback, Volume 8 was to be called Sauron Defeated and was to be the last volume.

Some information on the appendices and a soon-abandoned sequel to the novel can be found in volume 12, The Peoples of Middle-earth.

The titles of the volumes derive from discarded titles for the separate books of The Lord of the Rings. J. R. R. Tolkien conceived that novel as a single volume structured into six "books" plus extensive appendices, but his publisher split the work into three volumes, each containing two books; the appendices were included in the third. The titles proposed by Tolkien for the six books were: Book 1, The First Journey or The Ring Sets Out; Book 2, The Journey of the Nine Companions or The Ring Goes South; Book 3, The Treason of Isengard; Book 4, The Journey of the Ring-Bearers or The Ring Goes East; Book 5, The War of the Ring; and Book 6, The End of the Third Age. The title The Return of the Shadow was a discarded title for Volume 1.

Three of the titles of the volumes of The History of The Lord of the Rings were also used as book titles for the seven-volume edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Treason of Isengard for Book 3, The War of the Ring for Book 5, and The End of the Third Age for Book 6.

There is an inscription in Fëanorian characters (Tengwar, an alphabet Tolkien devised for the High-Elves) on the title page of each of the volumes of History of Middle-earth, written by Christopher Tolkien and describing the contents of the book.

The History of The Lord of the Rings reveals much of the slow, aggregative nature of Tolkien's creativity. As Christopher Tolkien noted of the first two volumes, his father had eventually brought the story up to Rivendell, but still "without any clear conception of what lay before him".^{[T 2]} He also noted how, on the way, his father could get caught up in a "spider's web of argumentation"^{[T 3]} – what Tom Shippey described as getting "bogged down in sometimes strikingly unnecessary webs of minor causation".^[1] Thus (for example) the character eventually known as Pippin Took was, in a series of rewriting and of deleted adventures, variously known as Odo, Frodo, Folco, Faramond, Peregrin, Hamilcar, Fredegar, and Olo – the figures also being Boffins and Bolgers, as well as Tooks.^{[T 4]}

Only with the chapter "The Breaking of the Fellowship" did fluency finally arrive for Tolkien, his son recording how chapters were suddenly "achieved with far greater facility than any previous part of the story".^{[T 5]} Thereafter Tolkien's problem was rather one of selecting between alternative accounts, so as to produce the best effect – two episodes in the "fascinating study"^[2] Sauron Defeated that were eventually deleted being the pardoning of Saruman, and an awards ceremony at the book's close.^[1]

• Shippey, Tom (2005) [1982]. The Road to Middle-Earth (Third ed.). HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-26110-275-0.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1989). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Treason of Isengard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-51562-4.
• Whittingham, Elizabeth A. (2017). The Evolution of Tolkien's Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-earth. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-1-47661-174-7.

• More in-depth information on the individual books in The History of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien