The Return of the Shadow

by Tolkien, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9780618083572
• ISBN10: 061808357X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Mariner Books

Summary

In this sixth volume of The History of Middle-earth the story reaches The Lord of the Rings. In The Return of the Shadow (an abandoned title for the first volume) Christopher Tolkien describes, with full citation of the earliest notes, outline plans, and narrative drafts, the intricate evolution of The Fellowship of the Ring and the gradual emergence of the conceptions that transformed what J.R.R. Tolkien for long believed would be a far shorter book, 'a sequel to The Hobbit'. The enlargement of Bilbo's 'magic ring' into the supremely potent and dangerous Ruling Ring of the Dark Lord is traced and the precise moment is seen when, in an astonishing and unforeseen leap in the earliest narrative, a Black Rider first rode into the Shire, his significance still unknown. The character of the hobbit called Trotter (afterwards Strider or Aragorn) is developed while his indentity remains an absolute puzzle, and the suspicion only very slowly becomes certainty that he must after all be a Man. The hobbits, Frodo's companions, undergo intricate permutations of name and personality, and other major figures appear in strange modes: a sinister Treebeard, in league with the Enemy, a ferocious and malevolent Farmer Maggot. The story in this book ends at the point where J.R.R. Tolkien halted in the story for a long time, as the Company of the Ring, still lacking Legolas and Gimli, stood before the tomb of Balin in the Mines of Moria. The Return of the Shadow is illustrated with reproductions of the first maps and notable pages from the earliest manuscripts.

Table of Contents

Foreword	1	(10)
THE FIRST PHASE
A Long-Expected Party	11	(34)
From Hobbiton to The Woody End	45	(28)
Of Gollum and The Ring	73	(15)
To Maggot's Farm and Buckland	88	(22)
The Old Forest and the Withywindle	110	(7)
Tom Bombadil	117	(8)
The Barrow-Wight	125	(7)
Arrival at Bree	132	(16)
Trotter and The Journey to Weathertop	148	(29)
The Attack on Weathertop	177	(13)
From Weathertop to The Ford	190	(16)
At Rivendell	206	(14)
`Queries and Alterations'	220	(13)
THE SECOND PHASE
Return to Hobbiton	233	(17)
Ancient History	250	(23)
Delays are Dangerous	273	(13)
A Short Cut To Mushrooms	286	(12)
Again From Buckland to The Withywindle	298	(11)
THE THIRD PHASE
The Third Phase(1): The Journey To Bree	309	(22)
The Third Phase(2): At The Sign of The Prancing Pony	331	(21)
The Third Phase(3): To Weathertop and Rivendell	352	(17)
New Uncertainties and New Projections	369	(22)
THE STORY CONTINUED
In the House of Elrond	391	(24)
The Ring Goes South	415	(27)
The Mines of Moria	442	(26)
Index	468