When Allen & Unwin asked for a sequel to The Hobbit and Tolkien began to write The Lord of the Rings, he struggled to find the right voice for the narrator. During the early phases of composition, concerning the journey to Rivendell, the narrator’s voice at first was prominent, but steadily became, as Paul Edmund Thomas comments, ‘less of a presence, less intrusive, more self-effacing, and more inclined to show rather than tell the action. Some sections of [the early] drafts are so highly conversational that the narrator almost vanishes altogether: only the speaking cues such as “said Bingo” and “said Odo” stand to remind us of the narrator’s presence, as he becomes a mere reporter of speakers’ expressions and tones of voice’ (p. 176).
The first draft of the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings includes a good example of its early tone. After an account of Bilbo’s party, in which the hobbit announces that he will be going away and getting married, Tolkien wrote: ‘That’s that. It merely serves to explain that Bilbo Baggins got married and had many children, because I am going to tell you a story about one of his descendants, and if you had only read his memoirs up to the date of Balin’s visit [at the end of The Hobbit] – ten years at least before this birthday party – you might have been puzzled’ (*The Return of the Shadow, p. 15). Here too Bilbo’s memoirs enter the story. The text of the first chapter changed considerably before it reached its final form, but Bilbo’s memoirs remained an element, first in a mention of the ‘leather-bound manuscript’ he takes with him, and then his comment to Gandalf: ‘I might find somewhere where I can finish my book. I have thought of a nice ending for it : and he lived happily ever after to the end of his days.’ Throughout the story there are allusions to indicate written sources behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: Merry had seen Bilbo’s ‘secret book’, Bilbo made notes of Frodo’s account during the Council of Elrond, on the stairs of Cirith Ungol Sam wonders if their story will one day be read out of a great book with black and red letters, Bilbo gives his diary and all of his notes and papers to Frodo and asks him to ‘knock things into shape’. Frodo finishes the account of his own story and leaves the last few pages for Sam to complete.
In his original Foreword to The Lord of the Rings (1954) Tolkien stated that the tale had been ‘drawn for the most part from the memoirs of the renowned Hobbits, Bilbo and Frodo, as they are preserved in the Red Book of Westmarch. This chief monument of Hobbit-lore … was compiled, repeatedly copied, and enlarged and handed down in the family of the Fairbairns of Westmarch, descended from that Master Samwise of whom this tale has much to say.’ He does not provide any explanation for his ‘access’ to the information contained in the Red Book. However, in acknowledgment of the breadth of the story, he continues: ‘I have supplemented the account of the Red Book, in places, with information derived from the surviving records of Gondor notably the Book of the Kings; but in general, though I have omitted much, I have in this tale adhered more closely to the actual worlds and narrative of my original than in the previous selection from the Red Book, The Hobbit.’ The Foreword is followed by a Prologue in which Tolkien, posing as editor, supplies information about Hobbits and their history, which (outside the fictional frame) he began to assemble as early as 1938–9, during the ‘Third Phase’ of writing what became Book I.
As the story developed and Bilbo’s Ring became the One Ring made by Sauron, Tolkien faced the problem of explaining how Gollum could have contemplated giving it to Bilbo if he won the riddle contest as told in the first edition of The Hobbit. At length he decided that Bilbo had not told the truth in his diary, or to Gandalf and the dwarves within the story, because he was already coming under the malign influence of the Ring. This explanation is included in the Preface to The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien accordingly rewrote Chapter 5, which first appeared in the second edition of The Hobbit (1951), and supplied a note at the beginning to explained the change, even before The Lord of the Rings was published.
At the beginning of Appendix A in the first edition of The Return of the King (1955) Tolkien expanded on his sources of information, or rather as a good ‘editor’, described his sources, tracing their transmission, validating their reliability, identifying actual quotations, and explaining his method of dealing with the material:
Until the War of the Ring the people of the Shire had little knowledge of the history of the Westlands … but afterwards all that concerned the King Elessar became of deep interest to them; while in the Buckland the tales of Rohan were no less esteemed. Thus the Red Book contained many annals, genealogies, and traditions of the realms of the South and the North, derived through Bilbo from the books of lore in Rivendell; or through Frodo and Peregrin from the King himself, and from the records of Gondor that he opened to them: such as The Book of the Kings, The Book of the Stewards, and the Akallabêth (that is, The Downfall of Númenor). From Gimli no doubt is derived the information concerning the Dwarves of Moria. … But through Meriadoc alone, it seems, were derived the tales of the House of Eorl; for he went back to Rohan many times. … Some of the notes and tales, however, were plainly added by other hands at later dates, after the passing of King Elessar.
Much of this lore appears as notes to the main narrative, in which case it has usually been included in it; but the additional material is very extensive, even though it is often set out in brief and annalistic form. Only a selection from it is here presented, again greatly reduced, but with the same object as the original compilers appear to have had: to illustrate the story of the War of the Ring and its origins and fill up some of the gaps in the main account.
Actual extracts from the longer annals and tales that are found in the Red Book are placed within quotation marks. These can often be seen to be copies of matter not composed in the Shire. Notes made at later times are printed as notes or placed in square brackets.
The second edition (1965) has a longer Foreword, mainly concerned with the work’s lengthy gestation and its reception, and Tolkien’s denial, responding to critics, that it has an inner meaning or ‘message’. The material at the beginning of Appendix A was also expanded, and partly moved to become an extra section at the end of the Prologue; Tolkien does not seem to have noticed that this repositioning reveals, to anyone reading the Prologue before the story proper, that all four hobbits returned safely to the Shire. New information provided here includes the addition in Westmarch of a supplementary volume to the Red Book, ‘containing commentaries, genealogies, and various other matter concerning the hobbit members of the Fellowship’. It also describes two other copies of the Red Book: the first, the Thain’s Book, had been made at the request of King Elessar and taken to Gondor by Pippin. It preserved some material that was later lost from the original, and ‘in Minas Tirith it received much annotation, and many corrections … and there was added to it an abbreviated version of those parts of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen which lie outside the account of the War. The full tale is stated to have been written by Barahir, grandson of the Steward Faramir, some time after the passing of the King.’ An exact copy of this work was made in Gondor by Findegil, the King’s Writer, for Pippin’s great-grandson and kept at Great Smials in the Shire, together with other manuscripts written in Gondor,
mainly copies or summaries of histories or legends relating to Elendil and his heirs. Only here in the Shire were to be found extensive materials for the history of Númenor and the arising of Sauron. It was probably at Great Smials that The Tale of Years* was put together, with the assistance of material collected by Meriadoc. … It is probable that Meriadoc obtained assistance and information from Rivendell, which he visited more than once.
*Represented in much reduced form in Appendix B as far as the end of the Third Age.
Although Tolkien had implied in the first edition that the original Red Book was his source, he seems to have decided, perhaps prompted by queries from readers, that