Where Middle-earth comes from

How the legendarium grew

Fifty-seven years of writing, in layers. Each stratum is a phase Christopher Tolkien identified in The History of Middle-earth; the bars show when it was written, the entries show where it is printed.

1. 1916 – c. 1920

   The Book of Lost Tales

   Begun in hospital after the Somme, when Tolkien was twenty-five: the first full narratives of Valinor and the Elves, told to the mariner Eriol in the Cottage of Lost Play. The Fall of Gondolin was the first tale written down. The frame was abandoned within a few years, but almost every later story is already here in an early form.

   Printed inThe Book of Lost Tales, Part OneThe Book of Lost Tales, Part Two

   The Book of Lost Tales was begun by my father in 1916 — The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, Foreword

2. 1920 – 1931

   The Lays

   At Leeds Tolkien turned the story of Túrin into alliterative verse in the Old English manner, more than two thousand lines, and left it unfinished. In 1925 he began the Lay of Leithian, the story of Beren and Lúthien in rhymed couplets; it broke off in September 1931 with the hunting of the wolf. The tales grew in the verse: names, places and whole episodes first appear here.

   Printed inThe Lays of Beleriand

   he abandoned it for the Lay of Leithian at the end of that time, and never turned to it again — The Lays of Beleriand, Preface

3. 1926 – 1930

   Sketch and Quenta

   To explain the background of the Túrin poem to his old schoolmaster, Tolkien wrote a brief synopsis of the whole mythology in 1926. From that Sketch grew, in 1930, the Quenta Noldorinwa — the only version of the Silmarillion he ever carried through from beginning to end. Its sentences still echo in the book published in 1977.

   Printed inThe Shaping of Middle-earth

   the Quenta Noldorinwa was in fact the only complete version of 'The Silmarillion' that my father ever made — The Shaping of Middle-earth, Preface

4. 1930s – 1937

   Annals, Númenor and the Lost Road

   The years of The Hobbit. Beside the story the world got its scaffolding: annals of Valinor and Beleriand with dates, the Ambarkanta on the shape of the world, the Lhammas on the languages, and the first legend of Númenor with the time-travel story The Lost Road. A new Quenta Silmarillion was under way when, at the end of 1937, everything was set aside.

   Printed inThe Lost Road and Other Writings

   up to the time at the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938 when he set them for long aside — The Lost Road and Other Writings, Preface

5. December 1937 – 1949

   The Lord of the Rings

   Three days after his publisher asked for more about hobbits, Tolkien had written the first chapter. Twelve years followed, in fits and long halts: Strider was still a hobbit called Trotter, and Gandalf warned of a giant named Treebeard who haunted the forest. During the halt of 1945–46 he wrote The Notion Club Papers instead, and out of it came the Adûnaic language and a new Númenor. The first rough writing was finished in 1949; the Appendices came last.

   Printed inThe Return of the ShadowThe Treason of IsengardThe War of the RingSauron DefeatedThe Peoples of Middle-earth

   I did not finish the first rough writing till 1949 — The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter 241

6. 1950 – 1952

   The great remaking

   With the Ring finished, Tolkien went back to the Elder Days with new confidence: a new Lay of Leithian, a new Tuor, the Annals of Aman, the Grey Annals, a revised Quenta. He wanted both books published together as one long saga. When that plan collapsed in 1952, so did most of the work; the Silmarillion was never again close to completion.

   Printed inMorgoth's RingThe War of the JewelsThe Lays of Beleriand

   an ambitious remaking and enlargement of all the Matter of the Elder Days — Morgoth's Ring, Foreword

7. c. 1955 – 1960

   Myths transformed

   After publication the writing changed character. Instead of story came inquiry: the Laws and Customs of the Eldar, the Athrabeth on death and hope, Quendi and Eldar on the words the Elves used for themselves, and a series of notes questioning whether the sun and moon could really have been made after the trees. Christopher Tolkien calls this the second phase; little of it reached the published Silmarillion.

   Printed inMorgoth's RingThe War of the Jewels

   in this book also, therefore, two distinct 'phases' are documented — The War of the Jewels, Foreword

8. 1967 – 1973

   The last writings

   In the final years Tolkien wrote on the backs of publisher's notes: the Shibboleth of Fëanor on a change of sound in Quenya, the essay on Glorfindel, notes on Círdan, and the pieces later gathered in Unfinished Tales — the rivers and beacons of Gondor, the Disaster of the Gladden Fields, Cirion and Eorl. Philology had become the story.

   Printed inThe Peoples of Middle-earthUnfinished Tales

   some from 1967, the great majority from 1968, and some from 1970 — The Peoples of Middle-earth, Part Two, Late Writings