User:Chiswick Chap/Constructing The Lord of the Rings

The task of constructing The Lord of the Rings ...

Context
The request for a sequel to the 1937 children's book The Hobbit prompted J. R. R. Tolkien to begin what became his most famous work: the epic novel The Lord of the Rings (originally published in three volumes in 1954–1955). He eventually spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for the novel, during which time he received the constant support of the Inklings, in particular his closest friend C. S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set against the background of The Silmarillion, but in a time long after it.

Tolkien at first intended The Lord of the Rings to be a children's tale in the style of The Hobbit, but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing. Though a direct sequel to The Hobbit, it addressed an older audience, drawing on the immense backstory of Beleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which eventually saw posthumous publication in The Silmarillion and other volumes. Tolkien strongly influenced the fantasy genre that grew up after the book's success.

Construction
Persuaded by his publishers, Tolkien started "a new Hobbit" in December 1937. Nick Groom comments that he had "little sense of plot or character, direction or development, meaning or significance" to guide him through the "long and difficult process". After several false starts, the story of the One Ring emerged. The idea for the first chapter ("A Long-Expected Party") arrived fully formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo's disappearance, the significance of the Ring, and the title The Lord of the Rings did not come until the spring of 1938. Originally, he planned to write a story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however, he remembered the Ring and its powers and thought that would be a better focus for the new work. As the story progressed, he brought in elements from The Silmarillion mythology.

Writing was slow, because Tolkien had a full-time academic position, marked exams to bring in a little extra income, and wrote many drafts. Tolkien abandoned The Lord of the Rings during most of 1943 and only restarted it in April 1944, as a serial for his son Christopher Tolkien, who was sent chapters as they were written while he was serving in South Africa with the Royal Air Force. Tolkien made another major effort in 1946, and showed the manuscript to his publishers in 1947. The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not complete the revision of earlier parts of the work until 1949. The original manuscripts, which total 9,250 pages, now reside in the J. R. R. Tolkien Collection at Marquette University.

Book 1
As documented in The Return of the Shadow, Tolkien had written a five-page draft, what he called the "first germ" of The Lord of the Rings, by 19 December 1937 when he claimed to his publisher "I have written the first chapter of a new story about Hobbits – 'A long expected party'." He had completed a fourth, much fuller, draft of the chapter by 1 February 1938, as he offered it to the publisher Stanley Unwin on that date, for his son, the 12-year old Rayner Unwin to read. It was Rayner who had recommended that The Hobbit should be published.

By 4 March 1938, in another letter to his publisher, he had written drafts of three chapters, 1:1 "A Long-expected Party", 1:3 "Three's Company and Four's More" (the last three words later dropped), and 1:4 "To Maggot's Farm and Buckland" (which became "A Short Cut to Mushrooms"). In the letter he stated that the story had "taken an unpremeditated turn"; Christopher Tolkien identifies this confidently as the intrusion of Black Riders into the tale.

The protagonists that Tolkien had brought to Buckland were Bingo (Bilbo's "nephew", later named Frodo); Frodo; and Odo.

1:2 "The Shadow of the Past" 1:5 "A Conspiracy Unmasked" 1:6 "The Old Forest" 1:7 "In the House of Tom Bombadil" 1:8 "Fog on the Barrow-downs" 1:9 "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony"

Chapter 1:10 "Strider", at first untitled, had the hobbits Bingo, Odo, and Frodo meeting a person described in Gandalf's letter as "a ranger (wild hobbit) known as Trotter". Trotter leads them to Weathertop, where they are attacked by "tall black figures" in an untitled draft that became 1:11 "A Knife in the Dark"; Bingo cries out ''Elbereth! Gilthoniel! Gurth i Morthu'', is stabbed, and swoons.

1:12 "Flight to the Ford"

Book 6
As documented in Sauron Defeated, Tolkien first sketched the destruction of the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom in 1939. but the story of how the Ring came to fall into the Crack was still unclear in 1941. He made a first outline ("III") of the Book 6 narrative in October 1944; other outlines for Book 6 followed. He resumed writing some part of the novel, most likely Book 5, in September 1946. He wrote Book 6 in 1948.

The first draft of chapter 6:1 "The Tower of Kirith Ungol" reached the moment when Sam sees two orcs shot with arrows; it was close to its final form. The second draft adds Sam's temptation by the Ring. Tolkien completed the chapter in a third draft, "D".

6:2 "The Land of Shadow" was drafted "swiftly and in a single burst of writing". 6:3 "Mount Doom" was drafted in the same manuscript ("B"), directly without any preceding rough sketches; Christopher Tolkien suggests that his father's "long thought" about the destruction of the Ring allowed him to write the chapter "more quickly and surely than almost any earlier chapter". The draft 6:4 "The Field of Kormallen" (the "K" later becoming a "C") similarly reached almost its final form in a single stage. Tolkien was as successful with the first draft of 6:5 "The Steward and the King"; its first draft was untitled, then given a pencilled-in title "Faramir and Éowyn". A fair copy was again untitled, with "The Watchers on the Walls" added at some stage, only to be replaced with the final title. 6:6 "Many Partings" was first drafted in the same manuscript as the previous chapter, but in a "remarkably brief and spare" form. Tolkien then extended the chapter by inserting new materials. This was followed by a fair copy ("B") and then ("C") "in my father's most handsome script", with the chapter's final form.

6:7 "Homeward Bound" was seemingly drafted rapidly "in one long burst", along with part of the next chapter, 6.8 "The Scouring of the Shire". Initially Gandalf was with the hobbits as they arrive at the gate to the Shire, and the story was very far from the chapter's final form. 6.9 "The Grey Havens" was first drafted in the same long manuscript as the previous two chapters. That text, as far as it went, survived largely unchanged, but several details were added, such as mentions of Fredegar Bolger, of Frodo's first illness, and of Merry and Pippin's fine clothing.

Tolkien initially drafted an epilogue about Sam Gamgee, Rosie Cotton, and their family, but it was cut from the final text of the novel. The first draft of the epilogue ended with the sentence "They went in, and Sam shut the door. But even as he did so, he heard suddenly, deep and unstilled, the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of middle-earth".