The Lord of the Rings Foreword
From Tolkien Gateway
The Foreword is the very first section appearing in The Lord of the Rings.
In the Foreword to the first edition of The Lord of the Rings,[note 1] Tolkien imposes himself as merely translator and editor of the text to come, thus sharing the in-universe character of the 1951 prefatory note to the second edition of The Hobbit.
In the Foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, first published in 1965,[note 2] Tolkien possibly revised the in-universe perspective,[1] after having pondered that he wishes the first edition Foreword "in any case to cancel" since "[c]onfusing (as it does) real personal matters with the 'machinery' of the Tale is a serious mistake".[2]
See also
Notes
- ↑ Reprinted in "greater part" in The Peoples of Middle-earth (pp. 25-6), and in its entirety in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (pp. lxviii-lxx).
- ↑ The second edition Foreword first appeared in the 1965 edition of The Lord of the Rings published by Ballantine Books, partly in in response to the Ace Books controversy.
References
- ↑ Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, pp. lxviii-lxx
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, "II. The Appendix on Languages", p. 26
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