The Lord of the
Rings
was started as a sequel to
The Hobbit, a fantasy
story published in 1937 that
Tolkien had originally written
for and read to his children.[10]
The popularity of The Hobbit
led to demands from his
publishers for more stories
about hobbits and
goblins, and so that same
year, at the age of 45, Tolkien
began writing the story that
would become The Lord of the
Rings. The story would not
be finished until 12 years
later, in 1949, and it would not
be fully published until 1955,
by which time Tolkien was 63
years old.
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The Fellowship of The Ring
-
The Two Towers
-
Silmarillion
-
The Return of The King
Tolkien did not
originally intend to write a
sequel to The Hobbit,
and instead wrote several other
children’s tales, such as
Roverandom. As his main
work, Tolkien began to outline
the history of
Arda, telling tales of the
Silmarils, and many other
stories of how the races and
situations that we read about in
the Lord of the Rings came to
be. Tolkien died before he could
complete and put together this
work, today known as
The Silmarillion, but
his son
Christopher Tolkien edited
his father’s work, filled in
gaps, and published it in 1977.[11]
Some Tolkien biographers regard
The Silmarillion as the
true “work of his heart”,[12]
as it provides the historical
and linguistic context for the
more popular work and for
his constructed languages,
and occupied the greater part of
Tolkien’s time. As a result
The Lord of the Rings ended
up as the last movement of
Tolkien’s legendarium and in his
own opinion “much larger, and I
hope also in proportion the
best, of the entire cycle.”[9]
Persuaded by his
publishers, he started ‘a new
Hobbit’ in December 1937.[10]
After several false starts, the
story of the One Ring soon
emerged, and the book mutated
from being a
sequel to The Hobbit
to being, in theme, more a
sequel to the unpublished
Silmarillion. The idea
of 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 arrive until the spring of
1938.[10]
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 decided to write
about it instead.[10]
He began with Bilbo as the main
character, but decided that the
story was too serious to use the
fun-loving hobbit. Thus Tolkien
looked for an alternate
character to carry the ring, and
he turned to members of Bilbo’s
family.[10]
He thought about using a son,
but this generated some
difficult questions, such as the
whereabouts of Bilbo’s wife and
whether he would let his son go
into danger. In Greek legend, it
was a hero’s nephew that gained
the item of power, and so the
hobbit Frodo came into
existence.[10]
(Technically Tolkien made Frodo
Bilbo’s second cousin once
removed, but because of age
differences the two were to
consider each other nephew and
uncle.)
Writing was slow
due to Tolkien’s perfectionism,
and was frequently interrupted
by his obligations as an
examiner, and by other
academic duties.[13]
According to sources, he seems
to have abandoned The Lord
of the Rings during most of
1943 and only re-started it in
April 1944.[10]
This effort was written as a
serial for
Christopher Tolkien and
C.S. Lewis — the former
would be sent copies of chapters
as they were written while he
was serving in
South Africa with the
Royal Air Force. He made
another push in 1946, and showed
a copy of the manuscript to his
publishers in 1947.[10]
The story was effectively
finished the next year, but
Tolkien did not finish revising
earlier parts of the work until
1949.[10]
A dispute with
his publishers,
Allen & Unwin, led to the
book being offered to
Collins in 1950. He intended
The Silmarillion
(itself largely unrevised at
this point) to be published
along with The Lord of the
Rings, but A&U were
unwilling to do this. After his
contact at Collins, Milton
Waldman, expressed the belief
that The Lord of the Rings
itself “urgently needed
cutting”, he eventually demanded
that they publish the book in
1952. They did not do so, and so
Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin,
saying, “I would gladly consider
the publication of any part of
the stuff.”[10]