The Illustrated The Lord of the Rings Read online

  THE LORD

  OF THE RINGS

  BY

  Illustrated by the author

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.tolkien.co.uk

  www.tolkienestate.co.uk

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  This edition is based on the reset edition first published 2020,

  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 1991

  First published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin 1954, second edition 1966

  Copyright © The Tolkien Estate Limited 1954, 1955, 1966

  Illustrations by J.R.R. Tolkien © The Tolkien Estate Limited 1937, 1954, 1972, 1973, 1976, 1979, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995, 2015

  Maps of ‘A Part of the Shire’ and ‘Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor’ drawn by C.R. Tolkien for The Lord of the Rings, and ‘The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age’ drawn by C.R. Tolkien for Unfinished Tales

  ®, ® and ‘Tolkien’® are registered trademarks of The Tolkien Estate Limited

  Jacket design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  The Proprietor on behalf of the Author hereby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the Work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

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  Source ISBN: 978-0-00-847128-6

  eBook Edition © October 2021 ISBN: 978-0-00-850131-0

  Version: 2021-09-27

  The Ring Verse

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

  FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

  PROLOGUE Concerning Hobbits, and other matters

  THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING

  BOOK ONE

  Chapter 1: A LONG-EXPECTED PARTY

  Chapter 2: THE SHADOW OF THE PAST

  Chapter 3: THREE IS COMPANY

  Chapter 4: A SHORT CUT TO MUSHROOMS

  Chapter 5: A CONSPIRACY UNMASKED

  Chapter 6: THE OLD FOREST

  Chapter 7: IN THE HOUSE OF TOM BOMBADIL

  Chapter 8: FOG ON THE BARROW-DOWNS

  Chapter 9: AT THE SIGN OF THE PRANCING PONY

  Chapter 10: STRIDER

  Chapter 11: A KNIFE IN THE DARK

  Chapter 12: FLIGHT TO THE FORD

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter 1: MANY MEETINGS

  Chapter 2: THE COUNCIL OF ELROND

  Chapter 3: THE RING GOES SOUTH

  Chapter 4: A JOURNEY IN THE DARK

  Chapter 5: THE BRIDGE OF KHAZAD-DÛM

  Chapter 6: LOTHLÓRIEN

  Chapter 7: THE MIRROR OF GALADRIEL

  Chapter 8: FAREWELL TO LÓRIEN

  Chapter 9: THE GREAT RIVER

  Chapter 10: THE BREAKING OF THE FELLOWSHIP

  THE TWO TOWERS

  BOOK THREE

  Chapter 1: THE DEPARTURE OF BOROMIR

  Chapter 2: THE RIDERS OF ROHAN

  Chapter 3: THE URUK-HAI

  Chapter 4: TREEBEARD

  Chapter 5: THE WHITE RIDER

  Chapter 6: THE KING OF THE GOLDEN HALL

  Chapter 7: HELM’S DEEP

  Chapter 8: THE ROAD TO ISENGARD

  Chapter 9: FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

  Chapter 10: THE VOICE OF SARUMAN

  Chapter 11: THE PALANTÍR

  BOOK FOUR

  Chapter 1: THE TAMING OF SMÉAGOL

  Chapter 2: THE PASSAGE OF THE MARSHES

  Chapter 3: THE BLACK GATE IS CLOSED

  Chapter 4: OF HERBS AND STEWED RABBIT

  Chapter 5: THE WINDOW ON THE WEST

  Chapter 6: THE FORBIDDEN POOL

  Chapter 7: JOURNEY TO THE CROSS-ROADS

  Chapter 8: THE STAIRS OF CIRITH UNGOL

  Chapter 9: SHELOB’S LAIR

  Chapter 10: THE CHOICES OF MASTER SAMWISE

  THE RETURN OF THE KING

  BOOK FIVE

  Chapter 1: MINAS TIRITH

  Chapter 2: THE PASSING OF THE GREY COMPANY

  Chapter 3: THE MUSTER OF ROHAN

  Chapter 4: THE SIEGE OF GONDOR

  Chapter 5: THE RIDE OF THE ROHIRRIM

  Chapter 6: THE BATTLE OF THE PELENNOR FIELDS

  Chapter 7: THE PYRE OF DENETHOR

  Chapter 8: THE HOUSES OF HEALING

  Chapter 9: THE LAST DEBATE

  Chapter 10: THE BLACK GATE OPENS

  BOOK SIX

  Chapter 1: THE TOWER OF CIRITH UNGOL

  Chapter 2: THE LAND OF SHADOW

  Chapter 3: MOUNT DOOM

  Chapter 4: THE FIELD OF CORMALLEN

  Chapter 5: THE STEWARD AND THE KING

  Chapter 6: MANY PARTINGS

  Chapter 7: HOMEWARD BOUND

  Chapter 8: THE SCOURING OF THE SHIRE

  Chapter 9: THE GREY HAVENS

  APPENDIX A: ANNALS OF THE KINGS AND RULERS

  APPENDIX B: THE TALE OF YEARS

  APPENDIX C: FAMILY TREES

  APPENDIX D: SHIRE CALENDAR FOR USE IN ALL YEARS

  APPENDIX E: WRITING AND SPELLING

  APPENDIX F: I THE LANGUAGES AND PEOPLES OF THE THIRD AGE

  INDEX

  MAPS

  Works by J.R.R. Tolkien

  About the Publisher

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  Map of The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age*

  The Ring-motif

  The Ring Verse

  A Part of the Shire*

  The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the Water

  Bag End, Underhill

  Buckland Ferry

  Old Man Willow

  Plan of Bree

  Rivendell

  Rivendell Looking West

  Contour map of the Misty Mountains around Mirrormere

  Moria Gate

  The Doors of Durin

  Inscription on Balin’s Tomb

  Leaves from the Book of Mazarbul

  The Forest of Lothlórien in Spring

  Rauros Falls & the Tindrock

  Fangorn Forest

  Helm’s Deep & the Hornburg with Helm’s Deep and surrounding lands

  Orthanc

  Minas Morgul gate

  Minas Morgul & the Cross-roads

  Shelob’s Lair

  Plan of Shelob’s Lair

  Cirith Ungol from the second stair

  Stanburg (Minas Tirith)

  Dunharrow

  The Tower of Cirith Ungol

  Mordor

  Barad-dûr

  The arm of Sauron

  The White Tree and stars

  Map of Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor*

  * Map by Christopher Tolkien

  NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS *

  J.R.R. Tolkien liked to paint and draw for recreation, and often used his talents with pencil, inks, watercolours, and coloured pencils in connection with his writings. The finished manuscript of The Hobbit, for example, contained a number of illustrations and maps. Tolkien’s original plan for its publication was to include a series of maps only, but he changed his mind, and produced and sent to his publisher,George Allen & Unwin, a selection of d
rawings with the suggestion that they might improve the book, though they were, he said, ‘not very good and may be technically unsuitable’. Although Allen & Unwin had made no allowance for art in their production budget beyond the set of maps, they found Tolkien’s illustrations so charming that they could not help but include them (with some economies). It may have occurred to his publisher also, as it has to readers since The Hobbit was first published in September 1937, that Tolkien’s illustrations complement and, in many points of visual detail, expand upon his text, leading the viewer more deeply into the author’s invented world.

  Critics of the first edition of The Hobbit who mentioned Tolkien’s art tended to do so with praise. Only a few felt that the quality of his pictures did not rise to that of his words. Most notably, Richard Hughes wrote in the New Statesman and Nation (4 December 1937) that ‘the author’s own illustrations … show no reflection of his literary talent and imagination’. In a letter to Stanley Unwin, director of George Allen & Unwin, sent just two weeks after this review, Tolkien confessed that he was ‘rather crushed by Richard Hughes on the illustrations, all the more so because I entirely agree with him’. Tolkien could be harshly critical of his own work, often referring to his art as inferior or defective. Most of his pictures, like his stories, were private pursuits, made for himself or his children, or to be seen only by a limited circle of friends. It was a new and sometimes uneasy experience for him to have his art before the eyes of a larger public, though his publisher assured him of its merit and readers have met it with affection. At any rate, he continued to paint and draw, and these skills played a role again when he came very soon to write The Lord of the Rings.

  The writing of The Lord of the Rings was complex and often arduous. By no means did the work spring full-fledged from his imagination. He came to describe its progress as one of ‘discovery’ as least as much as of invention, of allowing the ‘truth’ of the tale to reveal itself in the fullness of time. The work grew in the telling, as he also said, with hardly a word unconsidered. But behind its words were the author’s mental pictures, and some of these found expression first, or as well, in drawings – pictorial renderings, chiefly landscape or architecture, as well as maps, plans, and inscriptions. Christopher Tolkien reproduced some of these in The History of Middle-earth, sometimes redrawn for clarity, and described how they relate to the development of The Lord of the Rings. We ourselves included a different selection of Lord of the Rings art in J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, very limited in number and with only some in colour, and in The Art of The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien attempted to show its full range as far as we have been able to discover it.

  These were not, for the most part, pictures made to be published. Allen & Unwin seem not to have suggested an illustrated Lord of the Rings. Tolkien may have thought he was expected to produce one, since he had illustrated The Hobbit and had convinced its publisher to include his art, and certainly the idea occurred to him, though his feelings about it were mixed. He seems to pre-empt the subject in a letter to Charles Furth in February 1939, in which he predicts (well off the mark) that although he could possibly complete a manuscript of The Lord of the Rings by the following June, ‘I should have no time or energy for illustration. I never could draw, and the half-baked intimations of it seem wholly to have left me. A map (very necessary) would be all I could do’. This was still his view in January 1945, when he told his friends Leila and Patricia Kirke that although he had illustrated The Hobbit – badly, he thought – he would not have time also to illustrate its sequel.

  As we have seen, he could be insecure about his talents as an artist: he told Allen & Unwin that he was reluctant to ‘pose’ as a professional illustrator. But at length he found a professional artist whose style and imagination complemented his writing: Pauline Baynes. Near the end of December 1949, two months after his Farmer Giles of Ham appeared with Baynes’s ‘embellishments’, Tolkien asked if she would be interested in making illustrations or decorations – headpieces or small marginal pictures – for two large books of myth or legend, which he hoped would soon go into production. He did not explain fully that, having completed the typescript of The Lord of the Rings, he had come to feel that it should be published together with ‘The Silmarillion’, to which it was in some respects a continuation. But The Lord of the Rings was uncommonly long, and so was ‘The Silmarillion’ (as yet unfinished); and in Tolkien’s view, these could not be divided, rewritten, or compressed. Allen & Unwin could not agree to publish both at once, with costs of book production three times what they had been before the war, while the publisher Collins, to whom Tolkien turned with greater hope of bringing his great saga to print, had similar concerns, and asked that the work be cut. In 1952, Tolkien returned to Allen & Unwin with The Lord of the Rings alone, having modified his views (‘Better something than nothing!’), and – now working with Stanley Unwin’s son Rayner, who had been instrumental in publishing The Hobbit – discussions towards its publication began in earnest.

  Allen & Unwin were willing to publish The Lord of the Rings as a work of genius, but it was so long that they were hard pressed financially even to print its text, and could not provide in its production budget for more than essential art: maps, inscriptions, tables of alphabets, dust-jacket designs. Tolkien took a hand in all of these; Pauline Baynes did not, though she had been willing to provide the art Tolkien had once described.

  Many of the images featured here were made by Tolkien as pictorial aids to his writing as he worked out details. Some are no more than hasty sketches, made very small in pencil or ink within a manuscript or in the space of a margin, while others are more finished and include colour. Among these are drawings of Helm’s Deep and the Hornburg, where one of the great battles of The Lord of the Rings is fought, a view of Orthanc, Saruman’s tower at Isengard, and Minas Tirith (titled in the drawing, ‘Stanburg’), the fortress-city of Gondor.

  Some are works which Tolkien seems to have made solely for pleasure, such as a portrait of Old Man Willow near the Withywindle, a drawing of Lothlórien in spring, and a view of Barad-dûr with Mount Doom in the distance. Instead of aids to his writing, these seem to have been spontaneous visual expressions of text he had already written or conceived, or (in the case of Moria Gate) that he would come to write. They are among the best known of his Lord of the Rings drawings, having been reproduced in books and calendars, but do not altogether conform to the story as published.

  Tolkien also produced a small amount of art planned to be used in The Lord of the Rings in addition to maps. As explained above, only a handful of images could be reproduced (in the earliest editions) because the lengthy text was already so expensive to print. In this category are inscriptions for the title-page, the ‘fiery letters’ cut into the One Ring, the design on the doors of Moria, and the runic inscription on Balin’s tomb, as well as the charts of Tengwar and Cirth (‘Elvish’ script and runes) Tolkien produced for Appendix E (on writing and spelling).

  Finally, there are a number of designs Tolkien made for publication, but which have never appeared in, or with, an edition of The Lord of the Rings, or did not appear until many years had passed. These include most famously the ‘facsimiles’ of leaves from the ‘Book of Mazarbul’ found in Moria, which Tolkien made with great labour and thought essential to his book but were too expensive to print, and the versions of the ‘King’s Letter’ associated with an Epilogue Tolkien wrote for The Lord of the Rings but ultimately omitted. With this illustrated edition, it is possible for the reader to appreciate anew J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, as it emerged in both words and pictures, and at last enjoy a version of the story as it was held solely in the mind of its author.

  Wayne G. Hammond & Christina Scull

  FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

  This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring and included many glimpses of the yet more ancient history that preceded it. It was begun
soon after The Hobbit was written and before its publication in 1937; but I did not go on with this sequel, for I wished first to complete and set in order the mythology and legends of the Elder Days, which had then been taking shape for some years. I desired to do this for my own satisfaction, and I had little hope that other people would be interested in this work, especially since it was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of ‘history’ for Elvish tongues.

  When those whose advice and opinion I sought corrected little hope to no hope, I went back to the sequel, encouraged by requests from readers for more information concerning hobbits and their adventures. But the story was drawn irresistibly towards the older world, and became an account, as it were, of its end and passing away before its beginning and middle had been told. The process had begun in the writing of The Hobbit, in which there were already some references to the older matter: Elrond, Gondolin, the High-elves, and the orcs, as well as glimpses that had arisen unbidden of things higher or deeper or darker than its surface: Durin, Moria, Gandalf, the Necromancer, the Ring. The discovery of the significance of these glimpses and of their relation to the ancient histories revealed the Third Age and its culmination in the War of the Ring.

  Those who had asked for more information about hobbits eventually got it, but they had to wait a long time; for the composition of The Lord of the Rings went on at intervals during the years 1936 to 1949, a period in which I had many duties that I did not neglect, and many other interests as a learner and teacher that often absorbed me. The delay was, of course, also increased by the outbreak of war in 1939, by the end of which year the tale had not yet reached the end of Book One. In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin’s tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while. It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlórien and the Great River late in 1941. In the next year I wrote the first drafts of the matter that now stands as Book Three, and the beginnings of chapters I and III of Book Five; and there as the beacons flared in Anórien and Théoden came to Harrowdale I stopped. Foresight had failed and there was no time for thought.