e are concentrating
on Sauron Defeated, however there are ten other fascinating titles in
the History
of Middle Earth series, each one of which will be dealt with as
this information site grows. To access further information or to purchase
any of these books please click here.
In the first part of Sauron Defeated, Christopher Tolkien completes
his account of the writing of The Lord of the Rings,
beginning with Sam's rescue of Frodo from the Tower of Kirith Ungol,
and giving a very different account of the Scouring of the Shire. This
part ends with versions of the previously unpublished Epilogue, an alternate
ending to the masterpiece in which Sam attempts to answer his children's
questions years after the departure of Bilbo and Frodo from the Grey
Havens. The second part introduces The Notion Club Papers, now published
for the first time. Written by J. R. R. Tolkien in the interval between
The Two Towers and The Return of the King (1945-1946), these mysterious
Papers, discovered in the early years of the twenty-first century, report
the discussions of a literary club in Oxford in the years 1986-1987.
Those familiar with the Inklings will see a parallel with the group
whose members included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. After a discussion
of the possibilities of travel in space and time through the medium
of 'true dream,' the story turns to the legend of Atlantis, the strange
communications received by members of the club out of remote past, and
the violent irruption of the legend into northwestern Europe. Closely
associated with the Papers is a new version of the Numenorean legend,
The Drowning of Anadune, which constitutes the third part of the book.
At this time the language of the Men of the West, Adunaic, was first
devised - Tolkien's fifteenth invented language. The book concludes
with an elaborate account of the structure of this language by Arundel
Lowdham, a member of the Notion Club, who learned it in his dreams.
Sauron Defeated is illustrated with the changing conceptions of the
fortress of Kirith Ungol and Mount Doom, previously unpublished drawings
of Orthanc and Dunharrow, and fragments of manuscript written in Numenorean
script.
