of the two hobbits who ultimately issued in Peregrin Took and Fredegar Bolger, but only after the most extraordinary permutations and coalescences of name, character, and rôle; on the other hand I refrain from all discussion that is not directly relevant to the evolution of the narrative.
In the nature of the book, I assume conversance with The Fellowship of the Ring, and comparison is made throughout of course with the published work. Page-references to The Fellowship of the Ring (abbreviated FR) are given to the three-volume hardback edition of The Lord of the Rings (LR) published by George Allen and Unwin (now Unwin Hyman) and Houghton Mifflin Company, this being the edition common to both England and America, but I think that it will be found in fact that almost all such references can be readily traced in any edition, since the precise point referred to in the final form of the story is nearly always evident from the context.
In the ‘first phase’ of writing, which took the story to Rivendell, most of the chapters were title-less, and subsequently there was much shifting in the division of the story into chapters, with variation in titles and numbers. I have thought it best therefore to avoid confusion by giving many of my chapters simple descriptive titles, such as ‘From Hobbiton to the Woody End’, indicating the content rather than relating them to the chapter-titles in The Fellowship of the Ring. As a title for the book it seemed suitable to take one of my father’s own suggested but abandoned titles for the first volume of The Lord of the Rings. In a letter to Rayner Unwin of 8 August 1953 (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, no. 139) he proposed The Return of the Shadow.
No account is given in this book of the history of the writing of The Hobbit up to its original publication in 1937, although, from the nature of its relationship to The Lord of the Rings, the published work is constantly referred to. That relationship is curious and complex. My father several times expressed his view of it, but most fully and (as I think) most accurately in the course of a long letter to Christopher Bretherton written in July 1964 (Letters no. 257).
I returned to Oxford in Jan. 1926, and by the time The Hobbit appeared (1937) this ‘matter of the Elder Days’ was in coherent form. The Hobbit was not intended to have anything to do with it. I had the habit while my children were still young of inventing and telling orally, sometimes of writing down, ‘children’s stories’ for their private amusement … The Hobbit was intended to be one of them. It had no necessary connexion with the ‘mythology’, but naturally became attracted towards this dominant construction in my mind, causing the tale to become larger and more heroic as it proceeded. Even so it could really stand quite apart, except for the references (unnecessary, though they give an impression of historical depth) to the Fall of Gondolin, the branches of the Elfkin, and the quarrel of King Thingol, Lúthien’s father, with the Dwarves….
The magic ring was the one obvious thing in The Hobbit that could be connected with my mythology. To be the burden of a large story it had to be of supreme importance. I then linked it with the (originally) quite casual reference to the Necromancer, whose function was hardly more than to provide a reason for Gandalf going away and leaving Bilbo and the Dwarves to fend for themselves, which was necessary for the tale. From The Hobbit are also derived the matter of the Dwarves, Durin their prime ancestor, and Moria; and Elrond. The passage in Ch. iii relating him to the Half-elven of the mythology was a fortunate accident, due to the difficulty of constantly inventing good names for new characters. I gave him the name Elrond casually, but as this came from the mythology (Elros and Elrond the two sons of Eärendel) I made him half-elven. Only in The Lord was he identified with the son of Eärendel, and so the great-grandson of Lúthien and Beren, a great power and a Ringholder.
How my father saw The Hobbit – specifically in relation to ‘The Silmarillion’ – at the time of its publication is shown clearly in the letter that he wrote to G. E. Selby on 14 December 1937:
I don’t much approve of The Hobbit myself, preferring my own mythology (which is just touched on) with its consistent nomenclature – Elrond, Gondolin, and Esgaroth have escaped out of it – and organized history, to this rabble of Eddaic-named dwarves out of Völuspá, newfangled hobbits and gollums (invented in an idle hour) and Anglo-Saxon runes.
The importance of The Hobbit in the history of the evolution of Middle-earth lies then, at this time, in the fact that it was published, and that a sequel to it was demanded. As a result, from the nature of The Lord of the Rings as it evolved, The Hobbit was drawn into Middle-earth – and transformed it; but as it stood in 1937 it was not a part of it. Its significance for Middle-earth lies in what it would do, not in what it was.
Later, The Lord of the Rings in turn reacted upon The Hobbit itself, in published and in (far more extensive) unpublished revisions of the text; but all that lies of course far in the future at the point which this History has reached.
In the manuscripts of The Lord of the Rings there is extreme inconsistency in such matters as the use of capital letters and hyphens, and the separation of elements in compound names. In my representation of the texts I have not imposed any standardization in this respect, though using consistent forms in my own discussions.
(i)
The First Version
The original written starting-point of The Lord of the Rings – its ‘first germ’, as my father scribbled on the text long after – has been preserved: a manuscript of five pages entitled A long-expected party. I think that it must have been to this (rather than to a second, unfinished, draft that soon followed it) that my father referred when on 19 December 1937 he wrote to Charles Furth at Allen and Unwin: ‘I have written the first chapter of a new story about Hobbits – “A long expected party”.’ Only three days before he had written to Stanley Unwin:
I think it is plain that … a sequel or successor to The Hobbit is called for. I promise to give this thought and attention. But I am sure you will sympathize when I say that the construction of elaborate and consistent mythology (and two languages) rather occupies the mind, and the Silmarils are in my heart. So that goodness knows what will happen. Mr Baggins began as a comic tale among conventional and inconsistent Grimm’s fairy-tale dwarves, and got drawn into the edge of it – so that even Sauron the terrible peeped over the edge. And what more can hobbits do? They can be comic, but their comedy is suburban unless it is set against things more elemental.
From this it seems plain that on the 16th of December he had not only not begun writing, but in all probability had not even given thought to the substance of ‘a new story about Hobbits’. Not long before he had parted with the manuscript of the third version of The Silmarillion to Allen and Unwin; it was unfinished, and he was still deeply immersed in it. In a postscript to this letter to Stanley Unwin he acknowledged, in fact, the return of The Silmarillion (and other things) later on that day. Nonetheless, he must have begun on the new story there and then.
When he first put pen to paper he wrote in large letters ‘When M’, but he stopped before completing the final stroke of the M and wrote instead ‘When Bilbo …’ The text begins in a handsome script, but the writing becomes progessively faster and deteriorates at the end into a rapid scrawl not at all points legible. There
