A private mythology Unlike "
fictional universes" constructed for the purpose of writing and publishing popular fiction, Tolkien's legendarium for a long period was a private project, concerned with
questions of philology,
cosmology, theology and mythology. His biographer
Humphrey Carpenter writes that although by 1923 Tolkien had almost completed
The Book of Lost Tales, "it was almost as if he did not want to finish it", beginning instead to rewrite it; he suggests that Tolkien may have doubted if a publisher would take it, and notes that Tolkien was a perfectionist, and further that he was perhaps afraid of finishing as he wished to go on with his
sub-creation, his invention of myth in Middle-earth. Tolkien first began working on the stories that would become
The Silmarillion in 1914. His reading, in 1914, of the
Old English manuscript
Christ I led to Earendel and the first element of his legendarium, "The Voyage of Earendel, the Evening Star". He intended his stories to become a mythology that would explain the origins of English history and culture, and to provide the necessary "historical" background for his invented
Elvish languages. Much of this early work was written while Tolkien, then a British officer returned from France during World War I, was in hospital and on sick leave. He completed "
The Fall of Gondolin" in late 1916. He called his collection of nascent stories
The Book of Lost Tales. This became the name for the first two volumes of
The History of Middle-earth, which include these early texts. Tolkien never completed
The Book of Lost Tales; he left it to compose the poems "
The Lay of Leithian" (in 1925) and "
The Lay of the Children of Húrin" (possibly as early as 1918). (later published in Volume IV of
The History of Middle-earth). The "Sketch" was a 28-page synopsis written to explain the background of the story of
Túrin to R. W. Reynolds, a friend to whom Tolkien had sent several of the stories. (also included in Volume IV). The
Quenta Noldorinwa was the last version of
The Silmarillion that Tolkien completed. Ælfwine means "Elf-friend" in Old English; men whose names have the same meaning, such as Alboin, Alwin, and
Elendil, were to appear in the two unfinished
time travel novels,
The Lost Road in 1936 and
The Notion Club Papers in 1945, as the protagonists reappeared in each of several different times. There is no such framework in the published version of
The Silmarillion, but the
Narn i Hîn Húrin is introduced with the note "Here begins that tale which Ǽlfwine made from the
Húrinien." Tolkien never fully dropped the idea of multiple 'voices' who collected the stories over the millennia.
A context for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings When Tolkien published
The Hobbit in 1937 (which was itself not originally intended for publication, but as a story told privately to his children), the narrative of the published text was loosely influenced by the legendarium as a context, but was not designed to be part of it. Carpenter comments that not until Tolkien began to write its sequel,
The Lord of the Rings, did he realise the significance of hobbits in his mythology. In 1937, encouraged by the success of
The Hobbit, Tolkien submitted to his publisher
George Allen & Unwin an incomplete but more fully developed version of
The Silmarillion called
Quenta Silmarillion. The publisher instead asked Tolkien to write a sequel to
The Hobbit. Writing
The Lord of the Rings during the 1940s, Tolkien was attempting to address the dilemma of creating a narrative consistent with a "sequel" of the published
The Hobbit and a desire to present a more comprehensive view of its large unpublished background. He renewed work on the Silmarillion after completing
The Lord of the Rings, and he greatly desired to publish the two works together. When it became clear that would not be possible, Tolkien turned his full attention to preparing
The Lord of the Rings for publication.
John D. Rateliff has analysed the complex relationship between
The Hobbit and
The Silmarillion, providing evidence that they were related from the start of
The Hobbits composition.
Towards publishable form With the success of
The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien in the late 1950s returned to the Silmarillion, planning to revise the material of his legendarium into a form "fit for publication", a task which kept him occupied until his death in 1973, without attaining a completed state. The scholar
Verlyn Flieger writes that Tolkien thought of his legendarium as a presented collection, with a
frame story that changed over the years, first with an Ælfwine-type character who translates the "Golden Book" of the sages Rumil or Pengoloð; later, having the Hobbit
Bilbo Baggins collect the stories into the
Red Book of Westmarch, translating mythological Elvish documents in
Rivendell. 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. Nagy notes that Tolkien went so far as to create facsimile pages from the Dwarves'
Book of Mazarbul that is found by the
Fellowship in
Moria. Further, Tolkien was a
philologist; Nagy comments that Tolkien may have been intentionally imitating the philological style of
Elias Lönnrot, compiler of the Finnish epic, the
Kalevala; or of
St Jerome,
Snorri Sturlusson,
Jacob Grimm, or Nikolai Gruntvig, all of whom Tolkien saw as exemplars 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, Christopher Tolkien "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. File:Editorial framing of The Monsters and The Critics.svg|
Christopher Tolkien's editorial framing of
The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays presents it as a set of scholarly texts. File:Editorial framing of The History of Middle-earth.svg|Christopher Tolkien's editorial framing of the 12 volumes of
The History of Middle-earth presents his father's legendarium, and the books derived from it, as a set of historic texts, analogous to the presentation of genuine scholarly works like
The Monsters and The Critics; and it creates a
narrative voice throughout the series, a figure of Christopher Tolkien himself. == See also ==