57-659: The Lost Road and Other Writings – Language and Legend before ' The Lord of the Rings ' is the fifth volume, published in 1987, of The History of Middle-earth , a series of compilations of drafts and essays written by J. R. R. Tolkien in around 1936–1937. It was edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher . The Lost Road and Other Writings contains the following pieces: The title page of each volume of The History of Middle-earth has an inscription in Tengwar , written by Christopher Tolkien and describing
114-516: A large quantity of legendarium manuscripts to his Oxfordshire home, where he converted a barn into a workspace. He and the young Guy Gavriel Kay started work on the documents, discovering by 1975 how complex the task was likely to be. In September 1975 he resigned from his position at New College, Oxford, to work exclusively on editing his father's writings. He moved to the south of France and continued this task for 45 years. In all, he edited and published 24 volumes of his father's writings, including
171-515: A long period. Elizabeth Whittingham writes that Tolkien valued the impression of depth that the mention of much older events had created in The Lord of the Rings , and that he realised he could not do the same for the Silmarillion stories as they were in that older time. Instead, a man from a later age, such as Eriol of The Book of Lost Tales , could visit Middle-earth and listen to
228-568: A mythology for England " led him to construct not only stories but a fully-formed world, Middle-earth , with invented languages , peoples , cultures, and history . Among his many influences were his own Roman Catholic faith, medieval languages and literature, including Norse mythology . He is best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), and The Silmarillion (1977), all set in Middle-earth. The story revolves around
285-556: A philologist like his father, edited the History , he created an editorial frame, inadvertently reinforcing the mythopoeic effect that his father wanted. J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was a professor of English language at the University of Leeds , and then at the University of Oxford . He specialised in philology , especially Old English works such as Beowulf . He is best known for his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of
342-463: A philologist, "inserted himself in the functional place of Bilbo" as editor and collator, in his view "reinforcing the mythopoeic effect" that his father had wanted to achieve, making the published book do what Bilbo's book was meant to do, and so unintentionally realising his father's intention. Tolkien's Middle-earth writings had become, in reality and no longer only in fiction, a complex work by different hands edited, annotated, and commented upon over
399-571: A poem named "Imram" at the same time, and it was the only element published in his lifetime. Virginia Luling writes of The Notion Club Papers that "Tolkien had reason to abandon it: the existing chapters are unsuccessful, though with gleams." Flieger comments that had either The Lost Road or The Notion Club Papers been finished, we would have had a dream of time-travel through actual history and recorded myth which would have functioned as both introduction and epilogue to Tolkien's own invented mythology. The result would have been time-travel not on
456-537: A real set of legends from the past, in just the same way that his editing of The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays presented his father's essays as scholarly work. Outside Christopher Tolkien's editorial frame, other authors have contributed more humorous framing elements. Tolkien's friend and fellow- Inkling , C. S. Lewis , greatly enjoyed The Lay of Leithian , going so far as to invent scholars Peabody and Pumpernickel who comment on what Lewis pretends
513-727: A strong connection to Pembroke College, Oxford . Stanley Unwin , Tolkien's publisher, was a nephew of Fisher Unwin, the founding member of The Johnson Club. The Notion Club Papers may be seen as an attempt to re-write the incomplete The Lost Road (written around 1936-1937), being another attempt to tie the Númenórean legend in with a more modern tale through time travel . It follows the then-popular theory of J. W. Dunne , who had suggested in his 1927 An Experiment with Time that dreams could combine memories of both past and future events, and that time could flow differently for observers in different dimensions. The modern name "Alwin",
570-430: Is an ancient text . Mark Shea wrote a mock work of philological scholarship, set in the distant future, and looking back at the works attributed to Tolkien and to Peter Jackson . Shea states that "Experts in source-criticism now know that The Lord of the Rings is a redaction of sources ranging from The Red Book of Westmarch (W) to Elvish Chronicles (E) to Gondorian records (G) to orally transmitted tales of
627-425: Is at least partly correct. In her view, the one-volume Silmarillion "gives a misleading impression of coherence and finality, as if it were a definitive, canonical text", while in fact the legendarium from which it is adapted "is a jumble of overlapping and often competing stories, annals, and lexicons." All the same, she writes, that book was essential, as without it the History would never have been published, and
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#1732775810093684-527: Is described in The Silmarillion , as part of an invented mythology for England . Tolkien's biographer John Garth adds that The Notion Club Papers character Lowdham's middle name, Arundel, is both an English place-name and an echo of the legendarium's Éarendel (an ancestor of Elendil ). Both stories however break off before much time-travelling takes place. Tolkien finally managed to incorporate literary explorations of time in The Lord of
741-435: Is instead an out-of-universe history of Tolkien's creative process. In 2000, the twelve volumes were republished in three limited edition omnibus volumes. Scholars including Gergely Nagy and Vincent Ferré have commented that Tolkien had always wanted to create a mythology, but believed that such a thing should have passed through many hands and be framed by annotations and edits of different kinds. When Christopher Tolkien,
798-606: The History as "a work of extraordinary power and scope". They note that only with the History 's publication can that at last be judged; and that the legendarium as left to his son Christopher was "an immense and extremely complex set of writings". They note, too, that readers were hoping for "another Lord of the Rings ". Christopher created The Silmarillion as a "coherent and internally self-consistent narrative" by fitting together and modifying his father's drafts, which had been written in different styles, degrees of detail, and degrees of completeness. But this gave little idea of
855-645: The Old English name " Ælfwine ", and the Quenya name " Elendil " all mean "Elf-friend"; in The Lost Road , the story involves father-son characters named Edwin/Elwin, Eadwine/Aelfwine, Audoin/Alboin, Amandil/Elendil, all meaning "Bliss-friend/Elf-friend", as the pair travel successively further back in time all the way through history to Númenor, just as the protagonists of The Notion Club Papers do in their lucid dreams. This situates Númenor, whose downfall
912-601: The Rohirrim (R)," each with "their own agendas", like "the 'Tolkien' (T) and 'Peter Jackson' (PJ) redactors". He notes confidently that "we may be quite certain that 'Tolkien' (if he ever existed) did not write this work in the conventional sense, but that it was assembled over a long period of time..." The Notion Club Papers The Notion Club Papers is an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien , written in 1945 and published posthumously in Sauron Defeated ,
969-485: The 12 of the History . In those volumes, Verlyn Flieger writes, Christopher arranged and edited in chronological sequence all the stories of his father's mythology . Now published as the twelve-volume series, The History of Middle-earth , this work presents Tolkien's mythology in its entirety, tracing the path of a remarkable vision, a musical score, if you will, from its earliest conception to its author's last meditations on his creation. Christopher Tolkien's task
1026-529: The 3260s to the 3310s of the Second Age, which he accepts. The view of the distant past begins a conversation on the shores of Númenor about the state of the kingdom. Elendil tells his son Herendil that he is a member of the faithful who still support the Valar , trying to convince him of Sauron's corruption and negative influence over the king Tarkalion (Ar-Pharazôn). Herendil argues that Sauron has enlightened
1083-816: The 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth . It is a time travel story, written while The Lord of the Rings was being developed. The Notion Club is a fictionalization of Tolkien's own such club, the Inklings . Tolkien's mechanism for the exploration of time is through lucid dreams. These allow club members to experience events as far back as the destruction of the Atlantis -like island of Númenor , as narrated in The Silmarillion . The unfinished text of The Notion Club Papers runs for some 120 pages in Sauron Defeated , accompanied by 40 pages of Christopher Tolkien 's commentary and notes, with examples of
1140-585: The Jewels (1994) A combined index was published six years after the series was completed as The History of Middle-earth: Index (2002). A shorter version of volume 9, omitting material not related to The Lord of the Rings , was published as The End of the Third Age ; this is however usually sold as a boxed set along with volumes 6, 7 and 8 as The History of the Lord of the Rings . Christopher Tolkien made
1197-524: The Notion Club; these meetings are said to have occurred in the 1980s. The notes, written by one of the participants, include references to events that 'occurred' in the 1970s and 1980s. Green publishes a first edition containing excerpts from the documents. Two scholars read the first edition, ask to examine the documents, and then submit a full report. The "Notes to the Second Edition" mentions
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#17327758100931254-547: The Númenorians after his imprisonment and ascension to being the king's advisor, portraying the Valar as villains for keeping immortality from the species of men. Elendil tells him the true history of Arda up until that point where mortality was a gift rather than a curse, and discusses how militaristic Númenor is becoming, despite not having any enemies, to foreshadow the attempted invasion of Aman . Herendil agrees to join
1311-593: The Rings implies a wider market than that. Taum Santoski, in Mythlore , writes that the volume, with such items as The Etymologies , demonstrates Tolkien's "deep interest ... in revising his languages". He notes Christopher Tolkien's comment that his father "was perhaps more interested in the processes of [linguistic] change than he was in displaying the structure and use of the languages at any given time." Noting that people who wanted definitive forms of Quenya and Sindarin "will be disappointed", Santoski observes that
1368-459: The Rings , but he spent much of his time working on his legendarium . This was not published in his lifetime; he left a large mass of unsorted manuscripts for his literary executor, his son, Christopher Tolkien , to work on. Christopher, a philologist like his father, became lecturer in English language at New College, Oxford in 1963. After his father's death, he constructed a short summary of
1425-576: The Rings , in the form of a visit to what seems to be the deep past in the Elvish land of Lothlorien , following a tradition that in Elfland , time is different; the stay lasts a month, but feels like only a few days. According to Christopher Tolkien , had his father continued The Notion Club Papers , he would have linked the real world of Alwin Lowdham with his eponymous ancestor Ælfwine of England ,
1482-568: The Rings to what it had always been in Tolkien's mind: Silmarillion -centred. Reviewing The Peoples of Middle-earth , Noad adds that "The whole series of The History of Middle-earth is a tremendous achievement and makes a worthy and enduring testament to one man's creative endeavours and to another's explicatory devotion. It reveals far more about Tolkien's invented world than any of his readers in pre- Silmarillion days could ever have imagined or hoped for." He concludes that thorough study of
1539-632: The UK and by Houghton Mifflin in the US between 1983 and 1996 as follows: 2. The Book of Lost Tales, Part II (1984) 4. The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986) 5. The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987) 6. [1] The Return of the Shadow (1988) 7. [2] The Treason of Isengard (1989) 8. [3] The War of the Ring (1990) 9. [4] Sauron Defeated (1992) 10. [1] Morgoth's Ring (1993) 11. [2] The War of
1596-415: The abandoned novel, and reproduces examples of pages hand-written by his father. The text comments on C. S. Lewis 's Space Trilogy . Lewis and Tolkien were close friends and members of the Inklings literary club. The two men had agreed to write space travel (Lewis) and time travel (Tolkien) novels, since they agreed there were too few stories in existence that they really liked. Tolkien's remarks on
1653-475: The alternative forms of words, such as nume and numen ("West") are both "real". He comments that it is precisely "this incompleteness that makes all of the work of Tolkien so attractive". Santoski remarks, too, that in 1937, when The Hobbit had been published, "the currents of Tolkien's imagination" were evidently moving towards "a fusion": the Quenta Silmarillion was approaching completion;
1710-474: The clouds coming westwards over the Atlantic as resembling the great eagles of Manwë traveling to Númenor . Many years later as an adult, the dreams return to him as he starts to realize that they are actual memories from his ancestors, which he wishes he could see for himself. Fulfilling this wish, Elendil appears to him in another one of his dreams, offering to take him and his son Audoin to some time from
1767-452: The club. Jane Stanford links The Notion Club Papers to John O'Connor Power 's 1899 The Johnson Club Papers ; the two books have a similar title page. The Johnson Club was a "Public House School" and met in taverns as the Inklings did. The purpose was "Fellowship and free Exchange of Mind". Both clubs presented papers "which were read before the members and discussed". The Johnson Club was named for Samuel Johnson , who like Tolkien, had
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1824-926: The contents of the book. The inscription in Volume V reads "Herein are collected the oldest Tale of the Downfall of Númenor, the story of the Lost Road into the West, the Annals of Valinor and the Annals of Beleriand in a later form, the Ainulindalë , or Music of the Ainur, the Lhammas, or Account of Tongues, the Quenta Silmarillion or History of the Silmarils, and the history of many words and names." The Lost Road itself
1881-531: The contradictory evidence in dating the documents, and an alternative date is presented: they may have been written in the 1940s. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote several unfinished drafts of The Notion Club Papers in 1945. The 120-page fragment was published posthumously by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and by Houghton Mifflin in the US, within Sauron Defeated , the 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth , in 1992. The book includes in addition some 40 pages of Christopher Tolkien 's commentary and notes on
1938-469: The decision not to include any material related to The Hobbit in The History of Middle-earth . His reasons for this were that it had not been intended to form part of the mythology , was a children's story, and had originally not been set in Middle-earth; it was revised during the writing of The Lord of the Rings . The History of The Hobbit was published separately, in two volumes, in 2007 and
1995-644: The details for use in games and the like. Hammond and Scull answer that the History was meant to present "not a fixed design, but a living creation, and the process by which Tolkien gave it life." In their view, it offers "a unique opportunity to view the creative spark, a fascinating insight into the work of one of the most imaginative and influential writers of the twentieth century". They predict that it would start "a new era" in Tolkien studies. In 1967, Tolkien named his son Christopher as his literary executor, and more specifically as his co-author of The Silmarillion . After his father's death in 1973, Christopher took
2052-444: The development over time of Tolkien's conception of Middle-earth as a fictional place with its own peoples, languages , and history, from his earliest notions of " a mythology for England " through to the development of the stories that make up The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings . It is not a " history of Middle-earth " in the sense of being a chronicle of events in Middle-earth written from an in-universe perspective; it
2109-624: The diversity or process of continual change embodied in the legendarium. Accordingly, Christopher set to work on the History to try to tackle the "infinite variety" of his father's writings, from prose to alliterative verse, from cosmology and annals to time-travel stories. Hammond and Scull note that some readers felt that the History "should never have been published, that it is a disservice to Tolkien to display his missteps and false starts". They note, too, that other fans have objected to it "on false grounds of 'canonicity'", arguing that Tolkien had not "approve[d] these texts for publication", nor fixed
2166-519: The end of the given story it becomes clear Lowdham himself is a reincarnation of sorts of Elendil , leader of the men who escaped the destruction of Númenor. Other members of the Club mention their vivid dreams of other times and places. The Notion Club Papers is elaborately constructed. The main story (the Notion Club, itself the frame of the Númenor story) is set within a frame story . Both are set in
2223-814: The entire story may be glimpsed. The scheme was for time travel by means of "vision" or being mentally inserted into what had been so as to experience that which had happened. In this way the tale links the 20th century first to the Saxon England of Alfred the Great , then to the Lombard king Alboin of St Benedict 's time, the Baltic Sea during the Viking Age , Ireland at the time of the Tuatha Dé Danann 's coming (600 years after Noah's Flood ),
2280-482: The fictional compiler of The Book of Lost Tales , and with Atlantis. One of the members of the Notion Club, Michael George Ramer, combines lucid dreams with time-travel and experiences the tsunami that sank Númenor. He cannot tell if it is history, or fantasy, or something in between. Verlyn Flieger writes that the journeying about of the protagonist recalls the Celtic Imram voyages, noting that Tolkien wrote
2337-472: The future, after the actual time of writing, 1945. Embedded within the story are Tolkien's versions of European legends: King Sheave , and The Death of St. Brendan , a three-page poem also titled ' Imram '. In the frame story, a Mr. Green finds documents in sacks of waste paper at Oxford in 2012. These documents, the Notion Club Papers of the title, are the incomplete notes of meetings of
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2394-495: The languages had progressed; and his readers wanted a " new Hobbit ". Santoski remarks that "Fortunately Mr. Baggins ... had a nephew ." The History of Middle-earth The History of Middle-earth is a 12-volume series of books published between 1983 and 1996 by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and by Houghton Mifflin in the US. They collect and analyse much of J. R. R. Tolkien 's legendarium , compiled and edited by his son Christopher Tolkien . The series shows
2451-456: The legendarium stories, published in 1977 as The Silmarillion ; he followed this in 1978 with Unfinished Tales , a selection from the later legendarium. The History of Middle-earth documents J. R. R. Tolkien 's legendarium , an extensive set of drafts on many aspects of Middle-earth, which Tolkien wrote in stages throughout his life. The History , edited by his son Christopher, was published in 12 volumes by George Allen & Unwin in
2508-478: The meetings of an Oxford arts discussion group, the Notion Club. During these meetings, Alwin Arundel Lowdham discusses his lucid dreams about Númenor , a lost civilisation connected with Atlantis and with Tolkien's Middle-earth . Through these dreams, he "discovers" much about the Númenor story and the languages of Middle-earth (notably Quenya , Sindarin , and Adûnaic ). While not finished, at
2565-514: The pages hand-written by his father. J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, a philologist and a medievalist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages , especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of Beowulf , telling of a pagan world but with a Christian narrator, helped to shape his fictional world of Middle-earth . His intention to create what has been called "
2622-770: The prehistoric North in the Ice Age , a "Galdor story" of Middle-earth in the Third Age , and finally the Fall of Gil-galad , before recounting the prime legend of the Downfall of Númenor and the Bending of the World. The story starts with Alboin, a child in 20th century Britain who has strange visions referencing the First and Second Ages of Middle-earth after talking to his father Oswin about his 6th century namesake, where he sees
2679-677: The rebellion against Sauron in the safety of their house. The story breaks off at the end of the fourth chapter. The novel explores the theme of the " Straight Road " into the West, now open only in memory because the world has become round. Tolkien reworked and expanded some of the time travel ideas from The Lost Road in The Notion Club Papers , which was also left unfinished. The Tolkien scholar Wayne G. Hammond , writing in Mallorn in 1995, comments that reactions to Christopher Tolkien's works are split "between those who find
2736-405: The series a tribute to his father's imagination, and those who merely ask Why? " He quotes Valerie Housden's 1988 review of The Lost Road and Other Writings from Vector as "typical": "A must for Tolkien freaks and those preparing doctorates, my cat and I agreed this book was a good excuse for a snooze on a rainy afternoon." Hammond replies that the "fan response" to The History of the Lord of
2793-455: The tales of the Elves, providing a frame story . He records the stories, she writes, and "Eriol's perspective becomes the reader's, ... separat[ing] readers from these tales of past loss and faded glory." Flieger comments that Christopher's remark in the introduction to The Book of Lost Tales 1 , that he had made an error in not providing any sort of frame story for his 1977 The Silmarillion ,
2850-438: The texts, or occasionally from his father's use or reuse of a stock of paper that derived from a certain place or time, giving an earliest bound to the dating of those manuscripts. The scholar Gergely Nagy observes that Tolkien "thought of his works as texts within the fictional world " (his emphasis), and that the overlapping of different and sometimes contradictory accounts was central to his desired effect. Further, Tolkien
2907-442: The trilogy are similar in style to Lewis's commentary on Tolkien's poem The Lay of Leithian , in which he created a fictional history of scholarship of the poem and even referred to other manuscript traditions to recommend changes to the poem. Tolkien's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter , describes The Notion Club as a "thinly disguised" version of the Inklings, noting that the time travellers are two Oxford dons who are members of
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#17327758100932964-575: The twelve volumes would be essential for understanding "Tolkien's imaginative art". Liz Milner, for A Green Man Review , writes that the series provides "an unprecedented opportunity to examine a great writer's creative development over a period of 60 years". She adds that Christopher Tolkien's editing demonstrated "the endurance and cleaning power of Hercules ", given that his father's papers were all in disorder. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull , in VII , describe Tolkien's mythology as documented in
3021-456: The twelve-volume work "provides exactly the framework its editor [Christopher] felt was lacking in the earlier and in some ways premature book." Vincent Ferré writes that Christopher Tolkien's editing of the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth , using his skill as a philologist, created an editorial frame for his father's legendarium, and for the books derived from it. Ferré comments that this presented his father's writings as historical,
3078-623: Was a philologist ; Nagy comments that Tolkien may have been intentionally imitating the philological style of authors such as Elias Lönnrot , compiler of the Finnish epic, the Kalevala , whom Tolkien saw as an exemplar of a professional and creative philology. This was, Nagy believes, what Tolkien thought essential if he was to present a mythology for England , since such a thing had to have been written by many hands. Further, writes Nagy, by publishing his father's writings, Christopher Tolkien, also
3135-416: Was complicated by numerous features of the manuscripts. The drafts were handwritten, often hastily, making them hard to decipher. Many were in pencil; earlier pencilled versions were often erased and overwritten. Drafts were frequently annotated or extended on the same sheets of paper, making the exact sequence hard to reconstruct. The papers were in disorder; relative dates had to be worked out from evidence in
3192-419: Was edited by John D. Rateliff . Charles Noad , reviewing The War of the Jewels in Mallorn , comments that the 12-volume History had done something that a putative single-volume edition of The Silmarillion (such as Tolkien had hoped to publish) with embedded commentary could not have achieved: it had changed people's perspective on Tolkien's Middle-earth writings, from being centred on The Lord of
3249-472: Was the result of a joint decision by Tolkien and C. S. Lewis to make attempts at writing science fiction. Lewis ended up writing a story about space travel, which eventually became The Space Trilogy , and Tolkien tried to write something about time travel , but never completed it. The Lost Road is a fragmentary beginning of a tale, with a rough outline and several pieces of narrative, including four chapters dealing with modern England and Númenor, from which
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