The Lord of the Rings Foreword: Difference between revisions

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The original text wrote that his work "has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print ten years ago", a number that was updated in subsequent printings. The number was omitted in [[1976]] on a suggestion by Christopher Tolkien.{{HM|RC}}{{rp|p. lxxiiv}}
The original text wrote that his work "has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print ten years ago", a number that was updated in subsequent printings. The number was omitted in [[1976]] on a suggestion by Christopher Tolkien.<ref>{{HM|RC}}{{rp|p. lxxiiv}}
===Mistakes===
===Mistakes===
Recollecting the writing of the book 25 years earlier, the references to dates and progress of writing, are inaccurate (possibly false memories), contradicting more detailed letters that Tolkien had written while composing the story.  
Recollecting the writing of the book 25 years earlier, the references to dates and progress of writing, are inaccurate (possibly false memories), contradicting more detailed letters that Tolkien had written while composing the story.  

Revision as of 09:59, 10 December 2020

The Foreword is the very first section appearing in The Lord of the Rings.

The Foreword notoriously introduces minor spoilers that concern much later events in the story, as if they are well-known facts. For example, the first edition Forword mentioned the descendants of Master Samwise Gamgee, thus reassuring that he would survive the adventure.

First edition

In the Foreword to the first edition of The Lord of the Rings,[note 1] Tolkien imposes himself as merely translator and editor of the text to come, thus sharing the in-universe character of the 1951 prefatory note to the second edition of The Hobbit.

Tolkien disliked his own text, noting that it mixes real-life matters of his life (including referencing the Inklings and his children) with the in-universe "machinery" of the Tale.[1]

Second and later editions

In 1965 Ballantine Books needed a new text in order to renew the copyright in the United States, and to challenge the controversy raised by Ace Books. For that edition Tolkien wrote a new Foreword.[2]:p. lxx


The original text wrote that his work "has been read by many people since it finally appeared in print ten years ago", a number that was updated in subsequent printings. The number was omitted in 1976 on a suggestion by Christopher Tolkien.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag[2]:p. xxiii

See also

Notes

  1. Reprinted in "greater part" in The Peoples of Middle-earth (pp. 25-6), and in its entirety in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (pp. lxviii-lxx).

References


The Lord of the Rings
Foreword · Prologue · The Fellowship of the Ring · The Two Towers · The Return of the King · Appendices · Index