Sauron Defeated
HoME 9 — the Notion Club Papers, the epilogue, and the end of the Third Age tale
Nature
Volume 9 of The History of Middle-earth, the last of the four volumes on The Lord of the Rings. Its first part finishes the story: the destruction of the Ring, the fall of Barad-dûr, and the end of Sauron. The later parts set out the unfinished Oxford time-travel dialogue the Notion Club Papers (1945-46) and the Second Age matter it bore — the dream-tales of the drowning of Númenor — together with the projected Epilogue of **.
Contents
- The end of the Third Age — the drafting of the final chapters: the march to the Black Gate, the Ring’s destruction, the Eagles’ flight
- The Epilogue — the rejected scene in which Samwise, years later, shows his daughter Elanor the Great Star
- The Notion Club Papers () — the Oxford time-travel dialogue of 1945-46
- The Drowning of Anadûnê — the early Akallabêth text on the Downfall
- The Tale of Years of the Second Age
The Númenórean material completes the strand begun in The Lost Road (HoME 5).
Composition
The Notion Club Papers were written 1944-46, succeeding the conception of The Lost Road; the fragments break off in the middle of the Downfall. Christopher Tolkien’s editorial role was to extricate, date, and print the near-legend structure, to connect the club’s fictions to the Akallabêth, and to mark out the rejected Epilogue against the published ending.