The Lord of the Rings: Foreword and Prologue

Let me first begin with a few words about The Lord of the Rings itself. It is often referred to as a ‘trilogy’ (“Three books!”) but that only happened because of the exigency of the British publishing industry at the time (1954-1955), which was still suffering from the shortages that were a consequent of World War II. It was always meant to be one long tale, not three separate but interconnected volumes. It has since been published in that one volume format, many times, in increasingly elaborate editions as the popularity of Tolkien has grown. The Lord of the Rings itself consists of six ‘books’ or divisions, The Ring Sets Out and The Ring Goes South in The Fellowship of the Ring, The Treason of Isengard and The Ring Goes East in The Two Towers, and The War of the Ring and The End of the Third Age in The Return of the King. There have actually been times when each of these six divisions have been published this way serially, with a seventh volume for maps and appendices.

When I first read The Fellowship of the Ring, I can almost guarantee that I skipped over the Foreword. My instinct (at the time) was to get right into the story. At best, I probably skimmed over the Prologue, not paying complete attention to the lore that would become such a deep interest to me after I had completed the tale and was eager, nay, thirsty for more detail.

The Foreword of the 1965 Second Edition replaced the much shorter and somewhat ‘twee’ Foreword of the First Edition. In that one, Tolkien was rather more committed to the fiction of the historicity of this translation of ‘The Red Book of Westmark’. After a dozen or so years of success and criticism, he had a lot more to say about his struggles to complete it. He also had a few tart words for his detractors: “Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible: and I have no cause to complain, since I have a similar opinion of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.” Zing! This Second Edition, while correcting many errors of the First, also included the new Foreword to help secure copyright in the USA, where Ace Books was putting out a pirate edition that they believed was permissible through a legal loophole. The courts eventually decided against Ace, and they had to start paying Tolkien recompense. It was also this controversy that began the custom of printing on the authorized Ballantine paperbacks the statement: “This paperback edition, and no other, has been published with my consent and co-operation. Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it and no other.” It was certainly still a thing when I got my paperbacks. Whether it is yet a custom so many decades after the original reason or not, I do not know.

The Prologue is divided into five parts, Concerning Hobbits, Concerning Pipe-weed, Of the Ordering of the Shire, Of the Finding of the Ring, and Note on the Shire Records. The first three give a lot of background about Hobbits in general, information that it would be difficult or clumsy to include in the course of the narrative.

It is here that we learn that ‘pipe-weed’ or ‘leaf’ is “a variety probably of Nicotiana”; i.e. tobacco, and not ‘weed’ or marijuana. This was an association made as far back as the Hippie Age of Tolkien fandom and perpetuated by jesting insinuations in the Jackson films.  It is also here that we learn that Harfoots are definitely Hobbits, and that Hobbits are an offshoot of the human race, ‘cousins of ours’, mortal and not magical. The accumulation of details go far to building up the verisimilitude not only of the Hobbits but of the world they live in. They begin grounded in the likely, and gradually progress into the wondrous and heroic. ‘Of the Finding of the Ring’ brings details from The Hobbit to readers who may have forgotten them, or indeed had never even read them. It brings them into a more ‘grown-up’ context and accounts for the differences between the story of Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum from the original edition to the revised version, which put things more in line with The Lord of the Rings. It even offers an in-world reason for the change. ‘Shire Records’ gives a pedigree for the ‘copy’ of The Red Book of Westmark that was ‘translated’ by Tolkien, and even teases the possibility of the forthcoming Silmarillion with Bilbo’s Translations from the Elvish.

And now being primed for the actual tale, we are ready to begin The Lord of the Rings.