Tolkien Day Quote
Letter 163 to W.H. Auden in June 7, 1955:
"If you wanted to go from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But i met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but i had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than Frodo did. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there...Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystified as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22..."
x-posted to WotR thread:
http://www.warofthering.net/forums/vbulletin225/upload/showthread.php?p=597491#post597491
"If you wanted to go from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But i met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but i had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than Frodo did. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there...Most disquieting of all, Saruman had never been revealed to me, and I was as mystified as Frodo at Gandalf's failure to appear on September 22..."
x-posted to WotR thread:
http://www.warofthering.net/forums/vbulletin225/upload/showthread.php?p=597491#post597491