The Lord of the Rings
53 years ago on this date my life changed and I still had 18 years to go before I was to be given birth! I am who I am today and think the way I think this very moment because of J. R. R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings.
From today’s Writer’s Almanac:
It was on this day in 1954, the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out, The Fellowship of the Ring. It was the sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which came out in 1937. Tolkien had written The Hobbit for his own amusement and didn’t expect it to sell well. It’s the story of a small, human-like creature with hairy feet named Bilbo, who goes on an adventure through Middle Earth and comes back with a magical ring.
J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands. I smoke a pipe, like good, plain food, detest French cooking … I am fond of mushrooms, have a very simple sense of humor … go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.”
The Hobbit sold pretty well, partly because C.S. Lewis gave it a big review when it came out. And so Tolkien’s publisher asked for a sequel. Tolkien decided the new book would be about Bilbo’s nephew Frodo, but for a long time he had no idea what sort of adventure. Finally, he decided it would be about the magical ring, though the ring had not been such an important part of The Hobbit.
Tolkien spent the next 17 years working on The Lord of the Rings. He was a professor at Oxford. He had to write in his spare time, usually at night, sitting by the stove in the study in his house.
He was well into his first draft by the time World War II broke out in 1939. He hadn’t set out to write an allegory, but once the war began, he started to draw parallels between the war and the events in his novel: the land of evil in The Lord of the Rings, Mordor, was set east of Middle Earth, just as the enemies of England were to the east.
The book became more and more complicated as he went along. It was taking much longer to finish than he’d planned. He went through long stretches where he didn’t write anything. He thought about giving up the whole thing. He wanted to make sure all the details were right, the geography, the language, the mythology of Middle Earth. He made elaborate charts to keep track of the events of the story. His son Christopher also drew a detailed map of Middle Earth.
Finally, in the fall of 1949, he finished writing The Lord of the Rings. He typed the final copy himself sitting on a bed in his attic, typewriter on his lap, tapping it out with two fingers. It turned out to be more than a half million words long, and the publisher agreed to bring it out in three volumes. The first came out on this day in 1954. The publisher printed just 3,500 copies, but it turned out to be incredibly popular. It went into a second printing in just six weeks. Today more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world.
why doesnt’ anyone ever talk about tolkien’s fictional writings as being “faith inspired” the way they do lewis? i guess maybe it’s b/c aslan is kind of obvious…and lewis wrote all that non-fictional religious material. i just am suprised if i mention tolkien’s faith and i get that “huh?!” look from the D&D types who hate jesus. kind of like telling a 2nd year philosophy major that the founder of existentialism was a christian when they use existentialism to “disprove” the credibility of christianity. i like upsetting people :)
Some people have at times mentioned this, especially during the period of time when the films were hitting the screens. However, I think Tolkien isn’t spoken about in those terms because he wasn’t so pronounced with his Catholicism as, say, C.S. Lewis was with his emergence of Christianity. Tolkien was indeed a faithful Catholic and I definitely think that it shows in the themes presented throughout the trilogy and the rest of his writings. He just never really wrote about it outside of his fiction.
Upsetting people is always fun.
Shame of me but at first I saw films and only after that I read all the books. For sure this fact affects my impressions about films and books, but I think that writing is more thrilling.