Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal. So, first, one thing that I found intensely telling was that none of the edits that Tolkien makes are explicitly on the basis of symbolism or any other codes left for sharp critics. I think this is significant, because I predict that literary critics will soon turn their chops to making Lord of the Rings (like Shakespeare and many other works of fiction) into nothing more than a bunch of ideas cleverly disguised as symbols, as decoded from the story. I think this will happen because people have overprotected Tolkien from this by over-emphasizing his aversion to allegory, when in fact it's as clear as day that Tolkien included what we could call symbolism: for instance, Frodo and the company leave on their journey on December 25th and the ring is destroyed on March 25th, which fits Easter. But there's no sign of that here, and so the critics should not make their interpretations idea-centric. A Középfölde históriája-sorozat legolvasmányosabb darabja (eddig). Nem tudtam, hogy mire számítsak, pontosabban az előző kötetekből ismerős erősen töredékes, szerkesztői megjegyzésekkel és fejezet végi jegyzetekkel sűrűn megszakított korpusz befogadására készültem. Ehhez képest bár alaposan jegyzetelt, de hosszú oldalakon át megszakítás nélküli és nagyon "kész" érzésű szövegek adják a könyv javát, a bemutatott vázlatok pedig szintén roppant érdekesek. A kéziratok olvashatóságára (olvashatatlanságára), a számtalan javítására, kihúzásra, átírásra utaló megjegyzések Christopher Tolkientől ugyancsak hallatlan izgalmasak, talán minden korábbinál inkább az az ember érzése, hogy belelát Tolkien alkotói folyamatába (például hogy néha olyan gyorsan ír, hogy nem csak nehezen olvasható a kézírása, de ki se húzza az elvetett szavakat).

The effect is unlike anything I've ever read -- like watching over a shoulder as the author crosses out a paragraph, muttering to himself. Moment by moment, though, it can be amazingly dull to read. Chirstopher Tolkien minden elismerést megérdemel, hogy ilyen hihetetlen precizitással összeszerkesztette ezt a kötetet (is), de hatalmas dicséret jár a fordítónak, a szerkesztőnek, a szaklektornak és a névjegyzék összeállítóinak is. Igazán figyelemreméltó, Tolkien-rajongóknak kötelező könyv. (Talán még jobb lett volna, ha frissebb az élményem az eredeti könyvről.) Az is igaz viszont, hogy A Gyűrűk Ura iránt csak mérsékelten vagy egyáltalán nem érdeklődőknek egyáltalán nem ajánlanám olvasásra. I absolutely loved reading the notes that Tolkien wrote, and which went every time I bit further, as he envision the story and how it evolved. It’s like watching the story take shape under my very eyes. I loved the part of notes where Tolkien explored the nature of the One Ring, because it was like seeing his ideas move, chang and finally find a familiar form. I was excited to see Sam appear for the first time in the second draft. It’s such a different story from the one we know, but also so strangely familiar.

The Return of the Shadow

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, Tolkien 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]

The fascinating parts of this chapter for readers are the surprising differences between the four versions and the final result. Below is a short listing of some of the differences: The Hobbit (1937) • The Lord of the Rings ( The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings [1954] • The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings [1954] • The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings [1955]) • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book [1962] • The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle [1967] Version II: Bilbo gives the party and he is 71 years old. Elves, Dwarves, and even Men from Dale arrive at Bag End with goods for the party. Gandalf appears with his fireworks. Bilbo uses his Ring to disappear but only after stepping down so that no one noticed his going. [7] Ezzel együtt nem könnyű, amikor egy harmadik vázlatot olvasunk már ugyanarról a történetszálról, kiemelve az újabb és újabb változtatásokat - de ezzel együtt is szórakoztató tudott maradni számomra végig a könyv.

Preview Book

This article is about Chapter I of The Return of the Shadow. For the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings, see A Long-expected Party. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets. The Return of the Shadow is the first volume of the The History of The Lord of the Rings and the sixth volume of The History of Middle-earth. It is a history of the creation of The Lord of the Rings, a fascinating study of Tolkien's great masterpiece, from its inception to the end of the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring.

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.i. The Book of Lost Tales: Part One · ii. The Book of Lost Tales: Part Two · iii. The Lays of Beleriand · iv. The Shaping of Middle-earth · v. The Lost Road and Other Writings · vi. The Return of the Shadow · vii. The Treason of Isengard · viii. The War of the Ring · ix. Sauron Defeated · x. Morgoth's Ring · xi. The War of the Jewels · xii. The Peoples of Middle-earth · Index) · Thank you, Christopher Tolkien. This book consists of an edited collection of the first manuscripts for The Lord of the Rings, and it is probably the kind of book that is more useful than all the new interpretations of Tolkien out there. Tolkien was truly blessed in a son who cared about his father's work and had a first-rate historian's mind such that he could so ably curate and organize it for the public. The Nature of Middle-earth [2021] • The Fall of Númenor and Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth [2022]

ENGLISH: The problem with this book is that it is very difficult to follow, for it tells about many different versions of the first 16 chapters of "The Fellowship of the King" that J.R.R.Tolkien wrote in 1938-40. Not only are there up to six different versions of the first chapters, but each version is corrected once and again with ink of different colors, and Christopher tells us all about it, muddling the issue:-) Again, what's hopefully clear from the above is that the story seems to come almost fully formed. There is no location which Tolkien decided to cut, and the events basically happen just the way they happen in the final edition, with a surprisingly small amount of rewrites. This makes perfect sense. If Tolkien had used a word processor, I suspect he would have revised more extensively, but being tied down to the typewriter, I suspect that he wanted to use as much as he thought good. What is remarkable is how much the characters change. Tolkien really does succeed here though: his first glimpse of Frodo in the final version is a wistful and regretful Frodo missing Bilbo, which gives the character the personality we will see go over mountain and under hill over the next few books. Thank goodness Tolkien got rid of Trotter. Confronting the demon invasion, powerful dark heroes from all corners of the world have been summoned to your territory. They stand ready to aid you in your struggle against the demons. Remember, you are never alone! Gather every available force to conquer the demons!In this book is traced first the story of the destruction of the One Ring and the Downfall of Sauron at the End of the Third Age. Then follows an account of the intrusion of the Cataclysm of the West into the deliberations of certain scholars of Oxford and the Fall of Sauron named Zigûr in the Drowning of Anadûne. First published in 1988, The Return of the Shadow begins the four-volume subset of the HoME series that is sometimes called The History of the Lord of the Rings, as it encompasses the development of that book. The title for The Return of the Shadow comes from an early potential title for Book 1 of the novel. As part of the HoME series, The Return of the Shadow looks at the earliest drafts and ideas of the story that eventually becomes The Lord of the Rings, tracing the journey of the ring from Hobbiton to Rivendell and down into Moria, ending at Balin’s tomb. SPANISH: El problema con este libro es que es muy difícil de seguir, ya que se refiere a muchas versiones diferentes de los primeros 16 capítulos de "The Fellowship of the King", que J.R.R.Tolkien escribió en 1938-40. No sólo hay hasta seis versiones diferentes de los primeros capítulos, sino que cada versión se corrige una y otra vez con tinta de diferentes colores, y Christopher nos lo cuenta todo, haciendo su texto confuso :-) Full Book Name: The Return of the Shadow: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One (The History of Middle-Earth, #6)