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A review by slferg
Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age, Volume 9: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part Four by J.R.R. Tolkien
4.0
This series of books is the evolution of the stories of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Which gave Tolkien great trouble. He would have things planned out, and a new character would come in and change the story....he said so himself in one of his letters. But the evolution is interesting. Poor Christopher, his son, had a time going through the papers and trying to read his father's handwriting from the early and later stages. JRR sometimes wrote on pieces of paper and wrote in pen on top of a piece that he had written in pencil - and making changes.
I began buying and reading these when they first came out. I've had this one around a long time (it was published in 1992 and I probably bought it that year or soon after). I really like this one [I enjoyed the others, too] because it goes into more of Sam's story after Frodo and Bilbo left Middle Earth. It was Tolkien's original intention to end the Lord of the Rings with the story of Sam with his children, but he was advised not to. But I quite enjoyed the story he had intended. It is not such a mystical ending as was published, but a satisfying one.
That's the first third of this book. The next part is a look at the Notion Club Papers. Not sure if they were ever published (I think they may have been later), but just started on reading the evolution and ideas as they were formed.
I began buying and reading these when they first came out. I've had this one around a long time (it was published in 1992 and I probably bought it that year or soon after). I really like this one [I enjoyed the others, too] because it goes into more of Sam's story after Frodo and Bilbo left Middle Earth. It was Tolkien's original intention to end the Lord of the Rings with the story of Sam with his children, but he was advised not to. But I quite enjoyed the story he had intended. It is not such a mystical ending as was published, but a satisfying one.
That's the first third of this book. The next part is a look at the Notion Club Papers. Not sure if they were ever published (I think they may have been later), but just started on reading the evolution and ideas as they were formed.