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Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli
But you were right. Thjere's littled dout (per John Rateliff) that The Hobbit originally had no more connection to the legendarium than did Roverandom- although it wound up being drawn in. Even so, the borrowing of names like Elrond and the very inchoate Thu/Sur of the Fall of Numenor were really just throwaways, not intended especially seriously.
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Clearly. Yet one can understand Tolkien's problem once the Hobbit sequel becomes LotR & the culmination of Legendarium. This is why I'm so fascinated to read his attempt to make it 'fit'. The drive for internal consistency seems to have dogged Tolkien for most of his creative life & is quite probably one of the main reasons he published so little on M-e.
I can't help wondering what would have happened if circumstances had been different & it had been Roverandom that had been picked up by A&U instead of TH, & what would have happened if they had asked for a sequel to
that....
EDIT
Personally, I love TH, & wouldn't change it at all, but I hold to my guns on its inconsistency with the rest of the Legendarium. When I dared to raise my head above the parapet & say that 'tra-la-la-lally'ing Elves, & 'cockerney' trolls didn't fit into the Legendarium I got a good few responses from other posters attempting to 'prove' that they were perfectly consistent, & 'why shouldn't the Elves in Rivendell 'tra-la-la-lally the night away', or Trolls refer to their victims as 'Poor little blighters'?.....
I wonder whether those things will be seen to have survived into the proposed, 'more consistent' '3rd ed.'....