Fellowship of the Ring Pages Read Online
Foreword This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Band and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded information technology. It was begun presently after The Hobbit was written and earlier its publication in 1937; but I did non keep with this sequel, for I wished starting time to complete and prepare in order the mythology and legends of the Elderberry Days, which had then been taking shape for some years. I desired to do this for my ain satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since information technology was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in lodge to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues.
When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected piffling hope to no hope, I went back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from readers for more data apropos hobbits and their adventures. But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older earth, and became an account, as it were, of its stop and passing away before its offset and middle had been told. The process had begun in the writing of The Hobbit, in which there were already some references to the older matter: Elrond, Gondolin, the Loftier-elves, and the orcs, too as glimpses that had arisen unbidden of things college or deeper or darker than its surface: Durin, Moria, Gandalf, the Necromancer, the Ring. The discovery of the significance of these glimpses and of their relation to the ancient histories revealed the 3rd Age and its culmination in the State of war of the Ring.
Those who had asked for more data virtually hobbits eventually got information technology, but they had to wait a long fourth dimension; for the composition of The Lord of the Rings went on at intervals during the years 1936 to 1949, a period in which I had many duties that I did not fail, and many other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me. The filibuster was, of grade, also increased past the outbreak of state of war in 1939, by the end of which year the tale had non even so reached the end of Volume One. In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, generally by dark, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria. In that location I halted for a long while. Information technology was almost a yr afterwards when I went on and and so came to Lothlorien and the Great River tardily in 1941. In the adjacent year I wrote the commencement drafts of the matter that now stands as Book Three, and the ancestry of chapters I and 3 of Book V; and there as the beacons flared in Anorien and Theoden came to Harrowdale I stopped. Foresight had failed and there was no time for thought.
It was during 1944 that, leaving the loose ends and perplexities of a state of war which it was my task to conduct, or at to the lowest degree to report, I forced myself to tackle the journey of Frodo to Mordor. These capacity, eventually to become Volume Four, were written and sent out every bit a serial to my son, Christopher, and then in South Africa with the RAF. Nonetheless it took some other five years before the tale was brought to its nowadays finish; in that fourth dimension I changed my house, my chair, and my college, and the days though less night were no less laborious. And then when the 'end' had at last been reached the whole story had to be revised, and indeed largely re-written backwards. And it had to be typed, and re-typed: by me; the cost of professional typing by the x-fingered was beyond my ways.
The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since information technology finally appeared in impress; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have received or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime number motive was the desire of a tale-teller to endeavor his paw at a really long story that would concur the attention of readers, charm them, please them, and at times mayhap excite them or deeply motion them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably oftentimes at fault. Some who have read the book, or at whatsoever rate take reviewed it, take constitute it wearisome, cool, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But even from the points of view of many who have enjoyed my story there is much that fails to delight. Information technology is perhaps not possible in a long tale to please everybody at all points, nor to displease everybody at the same points; for I discover from the messages that I have received that the passages or chapters that are to some a blemish are all by others specially approved. The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the volume or to write it again, he volition pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too brusque.
As for any inner pregnant or 'message', it has in the intention of the writer none. It is neither emblematic nor topical. Every bit the story grew information technology put down roots (into the by) and threw out unexpected branches: only its principal theme was settled from the outset by the inevitable choice of the Band as the link between it and The Hobbit. The crucial chapter, "The Shadow of the Past', is ane of the oldest parts of the tale. Information technology was written long before the foreshadow of 1939 had yet become a threat of inevitable disaster, and from that point the story would have developed along essentially the same lines, if that disaster had been averted. Its sources are things long before in listen, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels.
The real war does non resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would accept been seized and used confronting Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not take been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the defoliation and treacheries of the time accept plant in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and shortly he would have made a Swell Ring of his own with which to challenge the cocky-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long accept survived even as slaves.
Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew erstwhile and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, truthful or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and feel of readers. I recollect that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the 1 resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.
An author cannot of class remain wholly unaffected by his experience, only the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to ascertain the process are at best guesses from testify that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events of times mutual to both were necessarily the virtually powerful influences. I has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth past 1914 was no less hideous an feel than to be involved in 1939 and the post-obit years. By 1918 all but i of my shut friends were dead. Or to take a less grievous matter: it has been supposed past some that 'The Scouring of the Shire' reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the commencement, though in the result modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, demand I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender (for the economic state of affairs was entirely different), and much further back. The country in which I lived in babyhood was being shab
bily destroyed before I was ten, in days when motor-cars were rare objects (I had never seen one) and men were still building suburban railways. Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the Immature miller, but his father, the Old miller, had a black beard, and he was non named Sandyman.
The Lord of the Rings is now issued in a new edition, and the opportunity has been taken of revising it. A number of errors and inconsistencies that even so remained in the text have been corrected, and an attempt has been made to provide information on a few points which attentive readers have raised. I have considered all their comments and enquiries, and if some seem to have been passed over that may be considering I have failed to keep my notes in order; simply many enquiries could only be answered by additional appendices, or indeed by the production of an accompaniment volume containing much of the textile that I did not include in the original edition, in particular more detailed linguistic data. In the concurrently this edition offers this Foreword, an addition to the Prologue, some notes, and an alphabetize of the names of persons and places. This index is in intention consummate in items just not in references, since for the nowadays purpose information technology has been necessary to reduce its bulk. A complete alphabetize, making full utilise of the textile prepared for me past Mrs. N. Smith, belongs rather to the accessory volume.
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