[Arvegil145]

Yay! My copy of the letters finally arrived.

How should we incorporate this part (if at all):

Mythical, Legendary and Fairy-story matter of my cycle of ‘Tales of the Three Ages’

A Tales of the First Age
1. The Silmarillion

(a) * Music of the Ainur. A short piece of prose of same ‘high style’ as what follows. Cosmogony. Introduces Valar (Powers) – roughly ‘gods’.

(b) * The History of the Eldar (Englished as ‘Elves’, but the pre-Shakespearian sense is intended), or Silmarillion proper. Nexus of legends, and stories in chronological order, into which some major tales are woven.[fn19] Contains the ‘history’ of the First Age, from the coming of the Eldar to its end with overthrow of Morgoth-melkor, the first Dark Lord. Called The Silmarillion, because most of the history and tales are grouped about or refer to the Three Great Jewels of Fëanor (the Silmarils), their making, theft, the war for their recovery, and their final loss. The Silmarillion, or ‘Tales of the First Age’ would (I surmise) be about the size of The Hobbit.

2. Ambarkanta (Shape of the World). Short piece of mythical ‘Pre-geography’.

3. Lambion Ontale (Descent of Tongues). Short account of the relation of Eldarin (Elvish) languages to one another, and to languages of Western Men.

4. Annals of Valinor: of the mythical ages.

5. Annals of Beleriand: covering in dated annalistic form most of the Silmarillion proper.

6. The Children of Húrin: long tale in prose of Túrin the Hapless and his sister Níniel.

7. The Fall of Gondolin: siege and fall of the chief Elvish stronghold. Birth of the hero Earendel. Prose.

8. The Lay of Leithian: the tale of Beren and Lúthien and the recovery of one Silmaril out of Hell. Prose in old form. (Fully told in verse: not quite complete).

None of these are proposed for publication. But the brief treatment of part of the matter of 6–8 needs a little filling out from the original completer forms, if The Silmarillion is to become quite a thing in itself, and not the mere resume, as [whence?] it started.


‘Tales of the Second Age’
* The Rings of Power. Shortish piece – about size of a long chapter. Describes the arising of the Second Dark Lord, Sauron, his attempt to enslave the world, and seduce the Eldar (Elves); the making of the Rings, and the secret forging of the One Ring, the ruling ring, by Sauron; and the building of Barad-dûr, ‘the Dark Tower’.

* The Downfall of Númenor. About the same length as preceding. A history in brief of Númenor (or Númenore) (more or less = Atlantis): its foundation, as a reward for the faithful Fathers of Men who were allies of the Eldar in the War against Morgoth; its rise to glory, and catastrophic fall in rebellion against the Valar. It brings the Second Age to its end in the overthrow of Sauron, and the establishment of the Kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor by the exiled remnant of Númenor. The Ruling Ring is lost.
Annals of the Second Age. Brief, dated, entries.

This material should, in some form, go as addendum or appendix to Silmarillion: thus providing background to whole of the great matter of the Third Age.


B ‘Tales of the Third Age’

The Hobbit. Published. A longish story of about 300 pages. In ‘fairy-story’ style, and ‘colloquial’ prose (for most part). A tale of romantic adventure among the peoples and creatures of the western world towards the end of the Third Age – or the growing shadow of Sauron Redivivus (the third Dark Lord) begins to be felt. Its main ostensible story is only loosely connected with the great Cycle, but it is a vital link in that Cycle, since it relates the discovery and bringing to light again of what eventually proves to be the fatal One Ring.

* The Lord of the Rings. The major romance or tale of the whole, which attempts to interweave and wind up all the themes and plots that have preceded: to combine the mythical ‘Elvish’, heroic, and fairy-tale elements (in story and in style) and unite them in one theme: the destruction of the Ring, the overthrow of Sauron (the last visible, material, Dark Lord), the re-establishment of the Númenórean throne – and so to end the Third Age, bring the lingering ‘dominion of the Elves’ to a close, and stop on the threshold of the ‘final Dominion of Men’. It is cast into 6 parts or ‘books’, each of approx. 12 chapters; and contains possibly 600,000 words. It contains, as it were, world-events and policies as seen or suffered by simple ‘hobbits’, and so begins and ends in the Shire of the Hobbits as did the previous book.

There is a lot of subsidiary material – partly made as working background material.

(1) Concerning Hobbits: originally intended as a foreword, giving a brief history and description of Hobbits, as well as a v. short resume of The Hobbit necessary to The Lord.

(2) The Languages of the Third Age, and The Alphabets. (Something of the Alphabets ought to go in at least. It proves amazingly attractive to some readers.)

(3) Annals of the Third Age. V. brief dated annals.

(4) Annals of the Kings (of Arnor and Gondor throughout Third Age from Elendil of Númenor to Aragorn Elessar a hero of the Lord of the Rings). Genealogies with brief notes.

(5) Of Aragorn and Arwen Undómiel. The story of the trials of Aragorn in preparation for his great task, and his long love and final winning of Arwen Elrond’s daughter. Briefly told. It is important to The Lord of the Rings, but is mainly assumed there, as a known thing.

(6) Hobbit Genealogies.

(7) Map of the Western World in Third Age.

Of these, items (1), (5), (6), (7) should in some form go into The Lord of the Rings.