On the 'death' of Gandalf.
While Tolkien certainly stated in a couple of Letters (156 & 181) that Gandalf had really died, it seems that wasn't always the case. Hammond & Scull make the point:
Quote:
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(II: 118). I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a serving-man - In the first three printings of the first edition (1954-S) fire and death read 'fire and flood', The phrase was emended in the fourth printing (1956). In his draft letter to Robert Murray, 4 November 1954,Tolkien wrote that Gandalf probably 'should rather have said to Wormtongue: "I have not passed through death (not 'fire and flood') to bandy crooked words with a serving-man'" (Letters, p. 201). Hammond/Scull: Reader's Companion to LotR
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The question is whether Tolkien originally
intended Gandalf to use the words 'fire & flood' (ie that he had not in fact 'died' at all (as in the note from HoM-e 6 I gave earlier) & only changed his mind after the book was published & deciding that Gandalf had actually died & been resurrected, or whether he had decided before publication that Gandalf had actually died but just forgot to change the words Gandalf spoke.
Of course in a Letter to Robert Murray Tolkien does call the return of Gandalf in TT 'a defect' which he didn't make enough effort to rectify (though from the context it is likely he means the way he handles the return, rather than the return itself, which, as CT indicated, was always Tolkien's intention).
Tolkien was clearly put on the spot by his readers who asked a great many questions about the nature of various characters so it may be that he only 'realised' after finishing LotR that Gandalf had 'really died'.