J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is a chronicle of the great War of the Ring, which occurred in the Third Age of Middle-earth. At that time, the One Ring, The Master ofall the Rings of Power, had been held for many years by the hobbits, but was eagerly sought by the Enemy who made it. To its wearer, the One Ring gave mastery over every living creature, but since it was devised by an evil power, in the end it inevitably corrupted anyone who attempted to use it. Out of the struggle to possess and control the One Ring, with all its ominous power, there arose a war comparable both in magnitude and in the issues involved to the great wars of our own time. An in that war, the Third Age of Middle-earth came to an end… The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes.
The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, was published in Great Britain by the London firm Gearge Allen & Unwin on 29 July 1954; an American edition followed in 21 October of the same year, published by Houghton Mifflin Company of Boston. In the production of the first volume, Tolkien experienced what became for him a continual problem: printer’s errors and compositor’s mistakes, including well intentioned ‘corrections’ of his sometimes idiosyncratic usage. These ‘corrections’ included the altering of dwarves to dwarfs, elvish to elfish, further to farther, nasturtians to nasturtiums, try and say to try to stay and (‘worst of all’ to Tolkien) elven to elfin. In a work such as The Lord of the Rings, containing invented languages and delicately constructed nomenclatures, errors and inconsistencies impede both the understanding and appreciation of serious readers – and Tolkien had many such readers from very early on. Even before the publication of the third volume , which contained much hitherto unrevealed information on the invented languages and writing systems, Tolkien received many letters from readers written in these systems, in addition to numerous enquiries on the finer points of their usage.
The second volume, The Two Towers, was published in England on 11 November 1954 and in the United States on 21 April 1955. Meanwhile Tolkien worked to keep a promise he had made in the foreword to volume one: that ‘an index of names and strange words’ would appear in the third volume. As originaly planned, this index would contain much etymological information on the languages, particulary on the elven tongues, with a large vocabulary. It proved chief cause of the delay in publishing volume three, which in the end contained no index at all, only an apology from the publisher for it’s absence. For Tolkien had abandoned work on it after indexing the volumes one and two, believing it’s size and therefore its cost to be ruinous.
Volume three, The Return of the King, finally appeared in England on 20 October 1955 and in the United States on 5 January 1956. With the appearance of the third volume, The Lord of the Rings was published in its entirety, and its first edition text remained virtually unchangedfor a decade. (Tolkien made a few small corrections, but further errors entered The Fellowship of the Ring in its second edition impression when the printer, having distributed the type after the first printing, reset the book without informing the author or publisher).
Douglas A. Anderson Ithaca, New York
April 1993
1992 marked the 100-year anniversary of the birth of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, one of the best fantasy writers of all time.
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