Tolkien's summary of The Lord of the Rings
"It brought tears to my eyes to write it, and still moves me, and I cannot help believing that it is a supreme moment of its kind." -- J.R.R. Tolkien.
Tolkien fans! Want to find out which part of LotR Tolkien was talking about there? Then run, don't walk, to baranduin's journal, where she's posted Tolkien's summary of The Lord of the Rings.
Why should you care about his summary? Because the way an author chooses to summarize his work after the fact gives us some idea of what HE feels he accomplished, and yeah, that's fascinating. The summary is from a 1951 letter to Milton Waldman, and was meant as part of an argument that The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion constituted one united work that should be published together. The result is a fascinating glimpse into Tolkien's mind. As Tolkien said in the larger letter, "It is difficult to say anything without saying too much: the attempt to say a few words opens a floodgate of excitement, the egoist and artist at once desires to say how the stuff has grown, what it is like, and what (he thinks) he means or is trying to represent by it all." (Letter 131)
Previously Christopher Tolkien included the letter's summary of The Silmarillion in published editions of the letters, but he inexplicably neglected to include the summary of LotR itself, which as far as I know has never been published until Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull printed it in The Lord of the Rings, A Readers Companion. That's where Baranduin got it, and that's a book I'll be ordering myself pronto. Meanwhile, for the impatient, here are baranduin's posts of the summary:
Books One and Two
Books Three and Four
Books Five and Six
Tolkien's comments on the ending
Tolkien fans! Want to find out which part of LotR Tolkien was talking about there? Then run, don't walk, to baranduin's journal, where she's posted Tolkien's summary of The Lord of the Rings.
Why should you care about his summary? Because the way an author chooses to summarize his work after the fact gives us some idea of what HE feels he accomplished, and yeah, that's fascinating. The summary is from a 1951 letter to Milton Waldman, and was meant as part of an argument that The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion constituted one united work that should be published together. The result is a fascinating glimpse into Tolkien's mind. As Tolkien said in the larger letter, "It is difficult to say anything without saying too much: the attempt to say a few words opens a floodgate of excitement, the egoist and artist at once desires to say how the stuff has grown, what it is like, and what (he thinks) he means or is trying to represent by it all." (Letter 131)
Previously Christopher Tolkien included the letter's summary of The Silmarillion in published editions of the letters, but he inexplicably neglected to include the summary of LotR itself, which as far as I know has never been published until Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull printed it in The Lord of the Rings, A Readers Companion. That's where Baranduin got it, and that's a book I'll be ordering myself pronto. Meanwhile, for the impatient, here are baranduin's posts of the summary:
Books One and Two
Books Three and Four
Books Five and Six
Tolkien's comments on the ending