Concept and creation

Writing



The Lord of the Rings was started as a sequel to The Hobbit, a fantasy story published in 1937 that Tolkien had originally written for and read to his children. The popularity of The Hobbit led to demands from his publishers for more stories about hobbits and goblins, and so that same year, at the age of 45, Tolkien began writing the story that would become The Lord of the Rings. The story would not be finished until 12 years later, in 1949, and it would not be fully published until 1955, by which time Tolkien was 63 years old.
Tolkien did not originally intend to write a sequel to The Hobbit, and instead wrote several other children's tales, such as Roverandom. As his main work, Tolkien began to outline the history of Arda, telling tales of the Silmarils, and many other stories of how the races and situations that we read about in the Lord of the Rings came to be. Tolkien died before he could complete and put together this work, today known as The Silmarillion, but his son Christopher Tolkien edited his father's work, filled in gaps, and published it in 1977. Some Tolkien biographers regard The Silmarillion as the true "work of his heart", as it provides the historical and linguistic context for the more popular work and for his constructed languages, and occupied the greater part of Tolkien's time. As a result The Lord of the Rings ended up as the last movement of Tolkien's legendarium and in his own opinion "much larger, and I hope also in proportion the best, of the entire cycle."
Persuaded by his publishers, he started 'a new Hobbit' in December 1937. After several false starts, the story of the One Ring soon emerged, and the book mutated from being a sequel to The Hobbit to being, in theme, more a sequel to the unpublished Silmarillion. The idea of the first chapter ("A Long-Expected Party") arrived fully-formed, although the reasons behind Bilbo's disappearance, the significance of the Ring, and the title The Lord of the Rings did not arrive until the spring of 1938. Originally, he planned to write a story in which Bilbo had used up all his treasure and was looking for another adventure to gain more; however, he remembered the ring and its powers and decided to write about it instead. He began with Bilbo as the main character, but decided that the story was too serious to use the fun-loving hobbit. Thus Tolkien looked for an alternate character to carry the ring, and he turned to members of Bilbo's family. He thought about using a son, but this generated some difficult questions, such as the whereabouts of Bilbo's wife and whether he would let his son go into danger. In Greek legend, it was a hero's nephew that gained the item of power, and so the hobbit Frodo came into existence. (Technically Tolkien made Frodo Bilbo's second cousin once removed, but because of age differences the two were to consider each other nephew and uncle.)
Writing was slow due to Tolkien's perfectionism, and was frequently interrupted by his obligations as an examiner, and by other academic duties. According to sources, he seems to have abandoned The Lord of the Rings during most of 1943 and only re-started it in April 1944. This effort was written as a serial for Christopher Tolkien and C.S. Lewis — the former would be sent copies of chapters as they were written while he was serving in South Africa with the Royal Air Force. He made another push in 1946, and showed a copy of the manuscript to his publishers in 1947. The story was effectively finished the next year, but Tolkien did not finish revising earlier parts of the work until 1949.
A dispute with his publishers, Allen & Unwin, led to the book being offered to Collins in 1950. He intended The Silmarillion (itself largely unrevised at this point) to be published along with The Lord of the Rings, but A&U were unwilling to do this. After his contact at Collins, Milton Waldman, expressed the belief that The Lord of the Rings itself "urgently needed cutting", he eventually demanded that they publish the book in 1952. They did not do so, and so Tolkien wrote to Allen and Unwin, saying, "I would gladly consider the publication of any part of the stuff."
Following the massive success of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien considered a sequel entitled The New Shadow, in which the Gondorians turn to dark cults and consider an uprising against Aragorn's son, Eldarion. Tolkien never went very far with this sequel, as it had more to do with human nature than with epic struggles, and the few pages which were written can be found in The Peoples of Middle-earth. Instead, Tolkien returned to writing and revising his Silmarillion story, though he died before he could finish this, and The Silmarillion was published posthumously by Tolkien's son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, in 1977.

Publication
For publication, due largely to post-war paper shortages, but also to keep the price down, the book was divided into three volumes: The Fellowship of the Ring (Books I and II), The Two Towers (Books III and IV), and The Return of the King (Books V and VI plus six appendices). Delays in producing appendices, maps and especially indices led to the volumes being published later than originally hoped — on 21 July 1954, on 11 November 1954 and on 20 October 1955 respectively in the United Kingdom, and slightly later in the United States. The Return of the King was especially delayed. Tolkien, moreover, did not especially like the title The Return of the King, believing it gave away too much of the storyline. He had originally suggested The War of the Ring, which was dismissed by his publishers.


The books were published under a 'profit-sharing' arrangement, whereby Tolkien would not receive an advance or royalties until the books had broken even, after which he would take a large share of the profits. An index to the entire three-volume set at the end of third volume was promised in the first volume. However, this proved impractical to compile in a reasonable timescale. Later, in 1966, four indices, not compiled by Tolkien, were added to The Return of the King. Because the three-volume binding was so widely distributed, the work is often referred to as the Lord of the Rings "trilogy". In a letter to the poet W. H. Auden (who famously reviewed the final volume in 1956), Tolkien himself made use of the term "trilogy" for the work though he did at other times consider this incorrect, as it was written and conceived as a single book. It is also often called a novel; however, Tolkien also objected to this term as he viewed it as a romance.
A 1999 British (ISBN 0-261-10387-3) seven-volume box set followed Tolkien's original six-book division, with the Appendices from the end of The Return of the King bound as a separate volume. The individual names for the books were decided based on a combination of suggestions Tolkien had made during his lifetime and the titles of the existing volumes. From Book I to Book VI, these titles were The Ring Sets Out, The Ring Goes South, The Treason of Isengard, The Ring Goes East, The War of the Ring, and The End of the Third Age . The titles The Treason of Isengard, The War of the Ring, and The End of the Third Age were also used as volume titles by Christopher Tolkien in The History of The Lord of the Rings.
The name of the complete work is often abbreviated to LotR, or simply 'LR' (Tolkien himself used 'L.R.'), and the three volumes as FR, or FotR (The Fellowship of the Ring), TT or TTT (The Two Towers), and RK, or RotK (The Return of the King).

Publishing history
The three parts were first published several months apart, in 1954 and 1955 by Allen & Unwin. They have since been reissued many times by multiple publishers, as one-, three-, six- or seven-volume sets. The two most common current printings are ISBN 0-618-34399-7 (one-volume) and ISBN 0-618-34624-4 (three-volume set). In the early 1960s, Donald A. Wollheim, science fiction editor of the paperback publisher Ace Books, theorized that The Lord of the Rings was not protected in the United States under American copyright law because the U.S. hardcover edition had been bound from pages printed in the United Kingdom, with the original intention being for them to be printed in the British edition. Ace Books proceeded to publish an edition, unauthorized by Tolkien and without royalties to him. Tolkien took issue with this and quickly notified his fans of this objection. Grass-roots pressure from these fans became so great that Ace Books withdrew their edition and made a nominal payment to Tolkien, well below what he might have been due in an appropriate publication. However, this poor beginning was overshadowed when an authorized edition followed from Ballantine Books to tremendous commercial success. By the mid-1960s the novel, due to its wide exposure on the American public stage, had become a true cultural phenomenon. Also at this time Tolkien undertook various textual revisions to produce a version of the book that would have an unquestioned US copyright. This would later become the Second Edition of The Lord of the Rings. Years later the copyright theory advanced by Ace Books was repudiated and their paperback edition found to have been a violation of Tolkien's copyright under US law.
Since the original printings of the 1950s and 1960s, many different editions of The Lord of the Rings have appeared. In the 1990s (partly in anticipation of the forthcoming The Lord of the Rings film trilogy) several new editions were released, including a three-volume hardback edition from Houghton-Mifflin, featuring colour illustrations by Alan Lee. In 2004 a new edition was published for the fiftieth anniversary of the book's original publication.
The novel has been translated, with various degrees of success, into dozens of other languages. Tolkien, an expert in philology, examined many of these translations, and had comments on each that reflect both the translation process and his work. To aid translators, Tolkien wrote his "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings". Because it purports to be a translation of the Red Book of Westmarch, translators have an unusual degree of freedom when translating The Lord of the Rings, and in contrast to the usual modern practice, names intended to have a particular meaning in the English version are translated to provide a similar meaning in the target language. In German, for example, the name "Baggins" becomes "Beutlin" (containing the word Beutel meaning "bag"), and "elf" becomes "Elb" (Elb does not carry the connotations of mischief that its English counterpart does, and is therefore arguably a better fit for Tolkien's creation).

Influences

The Lord of the Rings developed as a personal exploration by Tolkien of his interests in philology, religion (particularly Roman Catholicism), fairy tales, as well as Norse mythology, but it was also crucially influenced by the effects of his military service during World War I. Tolkien created a complete and highly detailed fictional universe (Eä), in which The Lord of the Rings was set, and many parts of this world were, as he freely admitted, influenced by other sources.
Tolkien once described The Lord of the Rings to his friend, the English Jesuit Father Robert Murray, as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision." There are many theological themes underlying the narrative including the battle of good versus evil, the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace. In addition the saga includes themes which incorporate death and immortality, mercy and pity, resurrection, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing. In addition the Lord's Prayer "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil" was reportedly present in Tolkien's mind as he described Frodo's struggles against the power of the One Ring.
Non-Christian religious motifs also had strong influences in Tolkien's Middle-earth. His Ainur, a race of angelic beings who are responsible for conceptualising the world, includes the Valar, the pantheon of "gods" who are responsible for the maintenance of everything from skies and seas to dreams and doom, and their servants, the Maiar. The concept of the Valar echoes Greek and Norse mythologies, although the Ainur and the world itself are all creations of a monotheistic deity — Ilúvatar or Eru, "The One". As the external practice of Middle-earth religion is downplayed in The Lord of the Rings, explicit information about them is only given in the different versions of Silmarillion material. However, there remain allusions to this aspect of Tolkien's writings, including "the Great Enemy" who was Sauron's master and "Elbereth, Queen of Stars" (Morgoth and Varda respectively, two of the Valar) in the main text, the "Authorities" (referring to the Valar, literally Powers) in the Prologue, and "the One" in Appendix A. Other non-Christian mythological or folkloric elements can be seen, including other sentient non-humans (Dwarves, Elves, Hobbits and Ents), a "Green Man" (Tom Bombadil), and spirits or ghosts (Barrow-wights, Oathbreakers).


The Northern European mythologies are perhaps the best known non-Christian influences on Tolkien. His Elves and Dwarves are by and large based on Norse and related Germanic mythologies. Names such as "Gandalf", "Gimli" and "Middle-earth" are directly derived from Norse mythology. The figure of Gandalf is particularly influenced by the Germanic deity Odin in his incarnation as "The Wanderer", an old man with one eye, a long white beard, a wide brimmed hat, and a staff; Tolkien states that he thinks of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer" in a letter of 1946.
Specific literature influences from European mythologies include the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf. Tolkien may have also borrowed elements from the Völsunga saga (the Old Norse basis of the later German Nibelungenlied and Richard Wagner's opera series, Der Ring des Nibelungen, also called the Ring Cycle), specifically a magical golden ring and a broken sword which is reforged. In the Völsungasaga, these items are respectively Andvarinaut and Gram, and very broadly correspond to the One Ring and Narsil/Andúril. Finnish mythology and more specifically the Finnish national epic Kalevala were also acknowledged by Tolkien as an influence on Middle-earth. In a similar manner to The Lord of the Rings, the Kalevala centres around a magical item of great power, the Sampo, which bestows great fortune on its owner, but never makes its exact nature clear. Like the One Ring, the Sampo is fought over by forces of good and evil, and is ultimately lost to the world as it is destroyed towards the end of the story. In another parallel, the Kalevala's wizard character Väinämöinen also has many similarities to Gandalf in his immortal origins and wise nature, and both works end with their respective wizard departing on a ship to lands beyond the mortal world. Tolkien also based his Elvish language Quenya on Finnish.
It is also clear that the Ring has broad applicability to the concept of absolute power and its effects, and that the plot hinges on the view that anyone who seeks to gain absolute worldly power will inevitably be corrupted by it. The concept of the "ring of power" itself is also present in Plato's Republic, Wagner's Ring Cycle, and in the story of Gyges' ring (a story often compared to the Book of Job).
Shakespeare's Macbeth influenced Tolkien in a number of ways. The Ent attack on Isengard was inspired by "Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane" in the play; Tolkien felt men carrying boughs were not impressive enough, and thus he used actual tree-like creatures. The phrase "crack of doom" was actually coined by Shakespeare for Macbeth, with an entirely different meaning.
On a more personal level, some locations and characters were inspired by Tolkien's childhood in Sarehole and Birmingham. It has also been suggested that The Shire and its surroundings were based on the countryside around Stonyhurst College in Lancashire where Tolkien frequently stayed during the 1940s. The Lord of the Rings was crucially influenced by Tolkien's experiences during World War I and his son's during World War II. The central action of the books — a climactic, age-ending war between good and evil — is the central event of many mythologies, notably the Norse, but it is also a clear reference to the well-known description of World War I, which was commonly referred to as "the war to end all wars".
After the publication of The Lord of the Rings these influences led to speculation that the One Ring was an allegory for the nuclear bomb. Tolkien, however, repeatedly insisted that his works were not an allegory of any kind. He states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one, and it would be irresponsible to dismiss such direct statements on these matters lightly. Tolkien had already completed most of the book, including the ending in its entirety, before the first nuclear bombs were made known to the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Nevertheless, a number of the work's themes have modern resonances. There is a strong theme of despair in the face of new mechanized warfare that Tolkien himself had experienced in the trenches of World War I. Some say there is clear evidence that one of the main subtexts of the story — the passing of a mythical "Golden Age" — was influenced not only by Arthurian legend, but also by Tolkien's contemporary anxieties about the growing encroachment of urbanisation and industrialisation into the "traditional" English lifestyle and countryside. The development of a specially bred Orc army, and the destruction of the environment to aid this, also have modern resonances; and the effects of the Ring on its users evoke the modern literature of drug addiction as much as any historic quest literature.