Books

     Foreword
     This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great
War of the Ring and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient
history that preceded it. It was begun soon after The Hobbit was
written and before its publication in 1937; but I did not go on with
this sequel, for I wished first to complete and set in order the
mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had then been taking
shape for some years. I desired to do this for my own satisfaction,
and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this
work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and
was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history'
for Elvish tongues.
     When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected little hope to
no hope, I went back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from
readers for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures.
But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and
became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its
beginning 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 High-elves, and the orcs, as
well as glimpses that had arisen unbidden of things higher 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 Third Age and its
culmination in the War of the Ring.
     Those who had asked for more information about hobbits eventually got
it, but they had to wait a long time; 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 neglect, and many
other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me. The
delay was, of course, also increased by the outbreak of war in 1939,
by the end of which year the tale had not yet reached the end of Book
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, mostly by
night, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria. There I halted for a
long while. It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to
Lothl?rien and the Great River late in 1941. In the next year I wrote
the first drafts of the matter that now stands as Book Three, and the
beginnings of chapters I and III of Book Five; and there as the
beacons flared in An?rien and Th?oden 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
war which it was my task to conduct, or at least to report, I forced
myself to tackle the journey of Frodo to Mordor. These chapters,
eventually to become Book Four, were written and sent out as a serial
to my son, Christopher, then in South Africa with the RAF. Nonetheless
it took another five years before the tale was brought to its present
end; in that time I changed my house, my chair, and my college, and
the days though less dark were no less laborious. Then when the 'end'