Anybody Ever Read A Book By Tolkien? (Christopher Tolkien)

Cafe Society
1

I found all these books that seem to be either written by, or edited by, J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, Christopher:

The History of Middle-Earth, 1983 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien - publication of posthumous works continues)
The Book of Lost Tales 1-2, 1983-84 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
Lays of Beleriand, 1985 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
The Shaping of Middle-Earth, 1986 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
The Lost Road and Other Writings, 1987 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
The Return of the Shadow, 1988 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
The Treason of Isengard, 1989 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
The War of the Ring, 1990 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
Sauron Defeated, 1991 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
Morgoth’s Ring: The Later Silmarillion Part 1, 1993 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)
The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion Part 2, 1994 (ed. by Christopher Tolkien)

Has anyone read any of them? Are they meant to be more scholarly in tone than entertaining?

2

They aren’t “books” per se. They are collected tomes of his father’s more obscure and unfinished works, as well as the great series in which he shows us the drafts of LOTR. Christopher does add some stuff, apparently, but only to flesh out what his father wanted or had only sketched out.

3

To answer your question, yes, I have read, and own, Return of the Shadow through Sauron Defeated (the drafts of LOTR) and have read bits of Morgoth’s Ring and the War of the Jewels.

4

To answer your question, yes, I have read, and own, Return of the Shadow through Sauron Defeated (the drafts of LOTR) and have read bits of Morgoth’s Ring and the War of the Jewels. The drafts are really worth reading if you are big huge fan of LOTR, because you really get to see how the story came together, a little of what could have been, and so forth. For a normal reader, however, it might be awful: far too much time spent discussing the intricacies of how many hobbits Tolkien had going along in the adventure in what version of what draft.

5

I’ve read these four. They essentially reconstruct all the drafts that JRRT did on Lord of the Rings and explain the thinking behind them. It is indeed scholarly rather than “entertaining,” but a lot of it is fascinating, including tons of passages that JRRT left out or rewrote for the final trilogy. If you find it interesting to know that Frodo was originally going to be “Bingo,” these are for you.

6

Or that Strider was originally a hobbit named Trotter.

7

And he had his feet burned off by Sauron, so he wore wooden shoes. That’s why they called him Trotter.

8

He was from Holland.