The Return of the Shadow: The History of Middle-Earth 6: Book 6

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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. Tolkien wasn’t particularly keen on the writing a sequel to The Hobbit, but accepted to do it. He wrote the first chapter three times before he found any traction and in this first volume of the four dedicated to The Lord of the Rings we can read the first three drafts - the later one reaching Moria - that he wrote before braking out for a long time after WWII broke out. 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. Having saved Lora from the clutches of demons, Aily encounters D, the leader of the Vampires. D leads them to his ravaged territory, also victimized by the demon invasion. Together, they resolve to rebuild the land and launch a counteroffensive against the demons! This book covers a larger part of the content of The Fellowship of the Ring. It encompasses TLotR's three initial stages of composition or, as Christopher Tolkien calls them, "phases", including what Tolkien later called "the crucial chapter" which sets up the central plot, " The Shadow of the Past" [1]. It finishes with the Fellowship of the Ring entering the Mines of Moria.

In prior Academy seminars, we have explored the first five volumes in the HoME series, The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, The Book of Lost Tales, Part 2, The Lays of Beleriand, The Shaping of Middle-earth, and The Lost Road. At the end of this next session, we will be halfway through the entire series that describes the history of the writing of J. R. R. Tolkien’s stories about Middle-earth. Let me admit first off that _The Return of the Shadow_ (book 6 in the History of Middle-earth series) is exactly what I didn’t want to read when I first heard that Christopher Tolkien was putting out a series of books of his father’s unpublished writings. As far as I was concerned we already had what Tolkien was willing and able to publish in The Hobbit and LoTR (and even something he hadn’t yet been able to publish in his lifetime in the form of The Silmarillion) so the appeal for me of seeing early drafts and material that the author himself had either superseded or conceivably felt was unpublishable didn’t seem like an appealing prospect. Why examine the dross when we already had the gold on display? Well, my foray into the other volumes of the series which detailed his monumental work in building the world, languages, and stories of what would become the First Age of Middle-earth in the Silmarillion material really opened my eyes to what a treasure trove there was and only added to my appreciation of what had previously been published. I saw that this was not simply a collection of discarded notes, imperfect drafts, and unpublishable material, but an expanded glimpse at the world Tolkien was creating. The sheer variety in both content and form meant that I was able to see much fuller versions of some stories that were only hinted at or told in precis in the published Silmarillion, and even the tales I was familiar with were often told in much more expanded, or even more impressive and enjoyable ways in some of these earlier documents. The Mythgard Academy sessions are always free for all and open to the public. Every week, the first 100 participants will be able to join us for the live discussion, which are recorded and made available at no cost through our iTunes U course and on the Signum University YouTube channel. In hindsight it's also fascinating to see Tolkien struggling with The Lord of the Rings as a sequel to The Hobbit. We're now used to thinking of The Lord of the Rings as the main story, for which The Hobbit is a pleasant introduction but a much different kind of story. Tolkien wrote: 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!The titles of the volumes derive from discarded titles 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 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. The Annotated Hobbit · The History of The Hobbit · The Nature of Middle-earth · The Fall of Númenor Version IV: Bilbo is not married and adopts his cousin Bingo Bolger. Bilbo disappears from the Shire at age 111 and Bingo Bolger-Baggins gives the party when he is 72 years old. [3]

J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Return of the Shadow, "The First Phase: I. A Long-expected Party, (i) The First Version" I don't think I can give this a star rating. I don't know if I've ever read anything that's simultaneously more boring and more fascinating than this set of books. [Here I'll review the whole History of the Lord of the Rings together: [book:The Return of the Shadow], The Treason of Isengard, The War of the Ring, and The End of the Third Age.] The last volume finishes the story and features the rejected Epilogue, in which Sam answers his children's questions. It 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 Tolkien's fictional language Adûnaic. 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 Great Tales of Middle-earth ( The Children of Húrin [2007] • Beren and Lúthien [2017] • The Fall of Gondolin [2018]) The next two outlines (` V' and ` VI') were developed from III, and are very closely related: they were certainly written at the same time. From the rejected sentence in VI `He has a secret' it is seen that my father had IV in front of him, for in that text appears `He has a secret letter from Faramir'. [punctuation sic] The rejected reference in V to `Dunharrow under the Halifirien' relates this outline to the note on Dunharrow in II (see p. 257). There is thus good reason to think that V and VI derive from 1944 rather than 1946.... In the War of the Ring is traced the story of the history at Helm's Deep and the drowning of Isengard by the Ents, then is told of the journey of Frodo with Samwise and Gollum to the Morannon, of the meeting with Faramir and the stairs of Cirith Ungol, of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and of the coming of Aragorn in the fleet of Umbar. All of which involves guessing how Putin would respond. The rest of us are oblivious to the scenarios being played out in the White House — let alone in Putin’s head. Yet there is nothing right now more urgent to our fate. J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Return of the Shadow, "The Second Phase: XIV. Return to Hobbiton"

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:-) Aunque siempre he leído "El Señor de los Anillos" en inglés, he leído este libro de Christopher en su traducción al español, y descubrí que no me gustan los nombres usados por los traductores de estos dos libros, tanto para las personas como para los lugares. Por ejemplo: ¿cómo se justifica traducir "Woodhall" (una ciudad de hobbits) como "Casa del Bosque"? Si Oxford apareciera en un libro, ¿qué traductor en español lo convertiría en "Vado el Buey"? Ni siquiera Google Translator lo hace :-) As explained in the Forward, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the early chapters of The Lord ofthe Rings in successive phases. [1] In the First Phase the professor wrote four different versions of A Long-expected Party, which are published in this chapter (later in the Second Phase a fifth version is provided [2]). For each of the four versions a short introduction is given, followed by the text (as far as it went), with notes and commentary thereafter. At the end of the chapter Christopher highlights the differences between the versions (and the story as eventually published), [3] Tolkien's musings on the further direction of the story, [4] and details of communications with Allen and Unwin. [5] In The Treason of Isengard the story of the Fellowship of the Ring is traced from Rivendell through Moria and the Land of Lothlórien to the time of its ending at Salembel beside Anduin the Great river, then is told of the return of Gandalf Mithrandir, of the meeting of the hobbits with Fangorn and of the war upon the Riders of Rohan by the traitor Saruman. J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Return of the Shadow, "The First Phase: I. A Long-expected Party, (ii) The Second Version"If there were a 5 per cent chance of Putin detonating a battlefield nuclear weapon, the world would be at more risk than at any point in most people’s lifetimes. In the past few days, Moscow’s signalling has arguably raised the chances to one in 10. Putin described last week’s test of the Sarmat hypersonic intercontinental ballistic missile as giving the west “food for thought”, which would not sound out of place from Blofeld, the 20th-century Bond villain. On Wednesday, Putin said: “We have all the instruments for this [responding to an existential threat to Russia] — ones nobody else can boast of. And we will use them, if we have to.” At first, I just wanted to see what was there and I was interested because I have read and reread JRR Tolkien's principle works so many times that I was finally ready to give the "History" a try. I came to appreciate the various versions of stories and poems on their own merit.