The Lord of the Rings: Prolegomenon to “The Return of the King”

I was feeling kind of antsy, so I worked out a quick runaround to my resolve not to start work on The Return of the King before the end of July. I remembered that I had made a Prolegomenon for The Two Towers, and decided I should do the same for Return. That way I’d keep my promise, not have to work so hard, and clear the decks for retailing the actual story when the time came.

So, The Return of the King is the third and final volume of The Lord of the Rings. It was released on October 25, 1955, in the United Kingdom and then on January 5, 1956, in the United States. After a quick Synopsis of what has gone before, it is divided into two Books, Book V (which Tolkien had suggested be titled The War of the Ring) and Book VI (which Tolkien had suggested be called The End of the Third Age), and the Appendices. The titles were not, however, used in the original publishing. The publication was delayed a bit while Tolkien tinkered over the Appendices; they couldn’t be as long as he wanted because of printing exigencies. Because the demand for the books had grown over the first two volumes, more copies were released than the previous print runs: 7000 in the UK and 5000 in the US.

Tolkien's Proposed Cover Art

Ace Bootleg

Barbara Remington Cover (1960's)

Tolkien's Art ('Barad -Dur') (1970's)

Darrell K. Sweet Cover (1980's)

The Horrible Covers

For the final book of the trilogy Tolkien suggested the titles of either The War of the Ring or The Return of the King. The chosen title refers to Aragorn’s assumption of the throne. Tolkien criticized it as giving away more of the story; but he was overruled by his publishers.

The Appendices include Appendix A: On Kings and Rulers (I. The Numenorean Kings II. The House of Eorl, III. Durin’s Folk); Appendix B: The Tale of Years (chronology of Middle-earth and the War of the Ring); Appendix C: Family Trees (Of the Main Hobbit Families in the Tale); Appendix D: Calendars (Time-keeping in Middle-earth, especially the Shire Calendar); Appendix E: Writing and Spelling (pronunciation and alphabets); Appendix F: The Languages of the Third Age and how they have been translated for modern English readers.

Additional material, such as The Quest for Erebor and The Hunt for the Ring, had to be omitted for space, though it was later published in Unfinished Tales. The Appendices have since been published in their own separate volume.

I really think it was the Appendices that allowed for the unprecedented growth of the fandom. The abundance of lore, from alphabets to calendars, allowed for immersion in another world, an exclusive ‘shibboleth’ to tell true believers from outsiders. The skeleton histories and shadowy areas allowed for speculation and dreams, places for ‘fan fiction’ (much of it of dubious quality, of course: see The Tolkien Scrapbook) to settle and foliate. It also was rich soil for the scholarly or semi-scholarly analysis of Middle-earth itself. The Appendices supplied, in a word, verisimilitudinous details for an imaginary world.

The first time I looked into The Return of the King, “Mike supplied me with The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King but could not get The Two Towers until a week later. I finished Fellowship quite quickly, and then was biting my nails in my eagerness to continue. In my desperation and weakness, I went ahead and read at least the first chapter of Return ... I was (quite understandably) rather confused, but I knew two facts. One was that Gandalf was alive (how?) and the other was that Pippin was with him. Eventually even I realized that it was not a good idea to forge ahead in this manner and forced myself to wait until Towers arrived.”

Many of the facts here can be found on The Tolkien Gateway (https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Main_Page), an excellent ‘J. R. R. Tolkien encyclopedia built by fans.’  And now we are set to begin The Return of the King. This is the last deep breath before the plunge.