The Return of the Shadow: The History of Middle-Earth 6: Book 6

Product Information

Three of the titles of the volumes of The History of The Lord of the Rings were also used as book titles for the seven-volume edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Treason of Isengard for Book 3, The War of the Ring for Book 5, and The End of the Third Age for Book 6. We are able to bring this series to the public only through the generosity of everyone who supports the Mythgard Institute and Signum University through their generous donations, who nominate and vote on the books that we examine in these discussions. In 2016 alone, we’ve been fortunate enough to look at two other volumes in The History of Middle-earth series – The Shaping of Middle-earth and The Lost Road and Other Writings – as well as one of my favorite books ever, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and a book I had never read before, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Extending the comparison to movie 'special features' a bit further, Christopher Tolkien provides extended cuts and deleted scenes to all of his father's popular published work. To read multiple volumes of Christopher Tolkien's "History" has had a cumulative effect on this reader.

The concept of mutually assured destruction, which took hold after 1962, is that each side has a clear window on the other’s routines and thinking. Most of the information-sharing that was put in place has been abandoned in the past decade. Putin has closed down cold war protocols and even accused Russian nuclear scientists who want to meet their US counterparts of being spies. This means the two adversaries, which account for 90 per cent of the world’s warheads, are far more ignorant of each other’s signalling than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. Ignorance, in this situation, is not bliss. This book (#6) covers part from beginning of LOTR to Mines of Moria, when Company discovers Balin's tomb, though there are glimpses of future events such as siege of Minas Tirith and destruction of the Ring.In prior Academy seminars, we have explored the first five volumes in the HoME series, The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1, The Book of Lost Tales, Part 2, The Lays of Beleriand, The Shaping of Middle-earth, and The Lost Road. At the end of this next session, we will be halfway through the entire series that describes the history of the writing of J. R. R. Tolkien’s stories about Middle-earth.

The UK national resilience plan can be a role model / From ​James Ginns, Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh and Toby Ord I’m enjoying The History of Middle-earth in general, but this first volume about the creation of The Lord of the Rings is particularly outstanding. I loved reading of how the book was created, because in a way it’s a story in itself. The Return of the Shadow" is so much fun. It contains descriptions of the way Tolkien fumbled his way along as he wrote LTRs. We get to see characters drawn differently, some with different names [So very, very many differnt names]. We see Tolkien discover the story that is so beloved by millions to be probed and uncovered from his designed intention to write a children's book that would be a follow up to "The Hobbit". Again, what's hopefully clear from the above is that the story seems to come almost fully formed. There is no location which Tolkien decided to cut, and the events basically happen just the way they happen in the final edition, with a surprisingly small amount of rewrites. This makes perfect sense. If Tolkien had used a word processor, I suspect he would have revised more extensively, but being tied down to the typewriter, I suspect that he wanted to use as much as he thought good. What is remarkable is how much the characters change. Tolkien really does succeed here though: his first glimpse of Frodo in the final version is a wistful and regretful Frodo missing Bilbo, which gives the character the personality we will see go over mountain and under hill over the next few books. Thank goodness Tolkien got rid of Trotter. Reading "The History of Middle-earth" books make me think of the commentary and 'special features' on DVD movies. The difference is that the writer/director/producer is dead and so it is all hosted by his son Christopher Tolkien.A Long-expected Party is the title of the opening chapter of The Return of the Shadow, the sixth book of The History of Middle-earth series by Christopher Tolkien. It is also the title of the first chapter in The Lord of the Rings, but in this volume Christopher provides the history of how that first chapter was written. The Mythgard Academy sessions are always free for all and open to the public. Every week, the first 100 participants will be able to join us for the live discussion, which are recorded and made available at no cost through our iTunes U course and on the Signum University YouTube channel.

The Hobbit (1937) • The Lord of the Rings ( The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings [1954] • The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings [1954] • The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings [1955]) • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book [1962] • The Road Goes Ever On: A Song Cycle [1967] Version I: Bilbo gives the party and he is 70 years old. There is no sign of Gandalf or any heir and Bilbo does not use the One Ring to disappear. The final words of his speech announce that he plans to get married. A narrator frankly explains that the story of the party was just to explain what Bilbo had been doing before going on to the real story, the tale of one of his descendants. The reason for Bilbo's departure is a flare-up of his Tookish side and the expiration of his wealth, with no mention of his Ring. [6]In this book is traced first the story of the destruction of the One Ring and the Downfall of Sauron at the End of the Third Age. Then follows an account of the intrusion of the Cataclysm of the West into the deliberations of certain scholars of Oxford and the Fall of Sauron named Zigûr in the Drowning of Anadûne. Either way, the genie is out of the bottle. Putin has broken a post-Cuba taboo on threatening to go nuclear. That, in itself, puts us in new territory. Without most people being aware of it, the world is entering its most dangerous period since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The majority under the age of 50 have grown up thinking the nuclear spectre is a relic of the last century. In the past few weeks, the prospect of a nuclear exchange has become the most live threat to this century’s peace. The next two outlines (` V' and ` VI') were developed from III, and are very closely related: they were certainly written at the same time. From the rejected sentence in VI `He has a secret' it is seen that my father had IV in front of him, for in that text appears `He has a secret letter from Faramir'. [punctuation sic] The rejected reference in V to `Dunharrow under the Halifirien' relates this outline to the note on Dunharrow in II (see p. 257). There is thus good reason to think that V and VI derive from 1944 rather than 1946.... The fascinating parts of this chapter for readers are the surprising differences between the four versions and the final result. Below is a short listing of some of the differences: I loved seeing all the evolutions, meeting characters that never made it to the final cut, particularly the hobbit ranger Trotter (who will ultimately evolve into Aragorn), Bingo Baggings who was the main character for the first couple of drafts, though I’ll admit I had a soft spot for taciturn, brooding Frodo Took.

The Return of the Shadow, the first volume of Christopher Tolkien's History of the Lord of the Rings series, tells the story of the early development of The Lord of the Rings, taking the narrative from the beginning up to the Mines of Moria. I love how the little penciled note above shows just how uncertain the beginning of The Lord of the Rings was. The story might have gone anywhere, no matter how inevitable it now seems. This is what makes The Fellowship of the Ring my favorite of the three books: the time available for whimsical wanderings, little adventures and events and details that don't really seem connected directly to the big story that emerges. Now I see that this meandering opening is partly a reflection of J.R.R. Tolkien's own gradual realization of where the story was going. It's wonderful. The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays · Beowulf and the Critics · Tolkien On Fairy-stories · The History of The Lord of the Rings reveals much of the slow, aggregative nature of Tolkien's creativity. As Christopher Tolkien noted of the first two volumes, Tolkien had eventually brought the story up to Rivendell, but still "without any clear conception of what lay before him". [T 2] He also noted how, on the way, his father could get caught up in a "spider's web of argumentation" [T 3] – what Tom Shippey described as getting "bogged down in sometimes strikingly unnecessary webs of minor causation". [1] Thus (for example) the character eventually known as Pippin Took was, in a series of rewriting and of deleted adventures, variously known as Odo, Frodo, Folco, Faramond, Peregrin, Hamilcar, Fredegar, and Olo – the figures also being Boffins and Bolgers, as well as Tooks. [T 4] Külön említést érdemel a néhány képes illusztráció, a térképek mellett még sokkal érdekesebb kéziratlapokat látni Tolkien gyönyörű, kalligrafikus betűivel és tündeírásával.The first volume of The History encompasses three initial stages of composition or, as Christopher Tolkien calls them, "phases", including what Tolkien later called "the crucial chapter" which sets up the central plot, " The Shadow of the Past". [T 1] It finishes with the Fellowship of the Ring entering the Mines of Moria. The first part of The History of The Lord of the Rings, an enthralling account of the writing of the Book of the Century which contains many additional scenes and includes the unpublished Epilogue in its entirety.