The Return of the Shadow

Nature

Volume 6 of The History of Middle-earth, the first of the four volumes documenting the composition of The Lord of the Rings. It prints the earliest stages (1937-1942) of the projected “sequel to The Hobbit” — the hero is first Bingo Baggins, the stranger who will become Strider appears first as “Trotter”, the Black Riders and the Ringwraiths take shape, and the affair of the Shire is set in motion. It is Third Age matter throughout, the late legendarium in its tale of the War of the Ring.

Contents

• The First Phase — “A Long-expected Party”, “From Hobbiton to the Woody End”, “The Journey to Bree”, “The Arrival at Bree”
• The Second Phase — “The Old Forest and the Barrow-downs”, “Tom Bombadil”, “The Ride to the Ford”, “To Weathertop”
• The Third Phase — the abandoned rewriting of the opening (the germ of “The Shadow of the Past”), “The Council of Elrond”, “The North of Rivendell”
• The Story Continued — the drafts carrying the tale toward the gates of Moria; the volume ends before the Tomb of Balin
• The discarded beginnings and names — Bingo Baggins, Trotter, and the progress “notes” and synopses by which the whole war was first plotted

Composition

Tolkien began in 1937-38 and, as the story outgrew its plan, started again “again from the beginning” several times during 1938-1942; the discarded beginnings, maps, and outlines are here disentangled and dated by his son, whose commentary connects the drafts to the elder legendarium from which the Third Age story drew.

Related

• The Treason of Isengard
• The War of the Ring
• Sauron Defeated
• The Peoples of Middle-earth
• Gandalf
• Sauron
• The Shire