The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit, but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
Bilbo Baggins is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings, and the fictional narrator of many of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. The Hobbit is selected by the wizard Gandalf to help Thorin and his party of Dwarves to reclaim their ancestral home and treasure, which has been seized by the dragon Smaug. Bilbo sets out in The Hobbit timid and comfort-loving, and through his adventures grows to become a useful and resourceful member of the quest.
Bag End is the underground dwelling of the Hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From there, both Bilbo and Frodo set out on their adventures, and both return there, for a while. As such, Bag End represents the familiar, safe, comfortable place which is the antithesis of the dangerous places that they visit. It forms one end of the main story arcs in the novels, and since the Hobbits return there, it also forms an end point in the story circle in each case.
Goldberry is a character from the works of the author J. R. R. Tolkien. She first appeared in print in a 1934 poem, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, where she appears as the wife of Tom Bombadil. Also known as the "River-woman's daughter", she is described as a beautiful, youthful woman with golden hair. She is best known from her appearance as a supporting character in Tolkien's high fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, first published in 1954 and 1955.
The Red Book of Westmarch is a fictional manuscript written by hobbits, related to the author J. R. R. Tolkien's frame stories. It is an instance of the found manuscript conceit, a literary device to explain the source of his legendarium. In the fiction, it is a collection of writings in which the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were recounted by their characters, and from which Tolkien supposedly derived these and other works. The name of the book comes from its red leather binding and casing, and from its having been housed in the Westmarch, a region of Middle-earth next to the Shire.
Tolkien fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially of the Middle-earth legendarium which includes The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. The concept of Tolkien fandom as a specific type of fan subculture sprang up in the United States in the 1960s, in the context of the hippie movement, to the dismay of the author, who talked of "my deplorable cultus".
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the real-world history and notable fictional elements of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy universe. It covers materials created by Tolkien; the works on his unpublished manuscripts, by his son Christopher Tolkien; and films, games and other media created by other people.
This is a list of all published works of the English writer and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien's works were published before and after his death.
Walking Tree Publishers was founded in 1996 by members of the Swiss Tolkien Society with the aim of publishing the proceedings of the Cormarë conference held that year to mark the 10th anniversary of the Swiss Tolkien Society. The company is run by volunteers and on a nonprofit basis, with surplus money reinvested into new products. It is dedicated exclusively to the publication of English-language works concerned with J. R. R. Tolkien and Tolkien studies.
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has been translated, with varying degrees of success, into dozens of languages from the original English. He was critical of some early versions, and made efforts to improve translation by providing a detailed "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings", alongside an appendix "On Translation" in the book itself.
The Last Ringbearer is a 1999 fantasy fan-fiction book by the Russian paleontologist Kirill Yeskov. It is an alternative account of, and an informal sequel to, the events of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It has been translated into English by Yisroel Markov, but the translation has not been printed for fear of copyright action by the Tolkien Estate.
Åke Joel Ohlmarks was a Swedish author, translator and scholar of philology, linguistics and religious studies. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Greifswald from 1941 to 1945, where he founded the institute for religious studies together with the Deutsche Christen member Wilhelm Koepp. His most notable contribution to the field is his 1939 study of Shamanism. As a translator, he is notable for his Swedish version of the Icelandic Edda, of Shakespeare's works and a heavily criticised translation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, as well as a version of the Qur'an and works by writers including Dante and Nostradamus.
The translation of The Lord of the Rings into Swedish has been the subject of controversy. The first version, by Åke Ohlmarks, was made in 1959–1961; it was the only one available in Swedish for forty years. Tolkien took issue with Ohlmarks' translation, identifying numerous errors and inconsistencies. In 1967, in response to Ohlmarks' Swedish and Max Schuchart's Dutch translations, Tolkien produced his "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings"; it discusses how to translate The Lord of the Rings' personal names and place-names, giving multiple examples from Ohlmarks' Swedish of what not to do when translating. Ohlmarks rejected all criticism, stating that he had intentionally created an interpretation of Tolkien, not a straight translation. Swedish commentators took a wider range of positions on Ohlmarks' version: some admired it, while others thought it defective.
J. R. R. Tolkien used frame stories throughout his Middle-earth writings, especially his legendarium, to make the works resemble a genuine mythology written and edited by many hands over a long period of time. He described in detail how his fictional characters wrote their books and transmitted them to others, and showed how later in-universe editors annotated the material.
Thomas Honegger is a scholar of literature, known especially for his studies of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth.
The philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien made use of multiple literary devices in The Lord of the Rings, from its narrative structure and its use of pseudotranslation and editorial framing, to character pairing and the deliberate cultivation of an impression of depth. The narrative structure in particular has been seen as a pair of quests, a sequence of tableaux, a complex edifice, multiple spirals, and a medieval-style interlacing. The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, on the other hand, has a single narrative thread, and repeated episodes of danger and recuperation in five "Homely Houses". His prose style, too, has been both criticised and defended.
A pseudotranslation is a text written as if it had been translated from a foreign language. J. R. R. Tolkien made use of pseudotranslation in The Lord of the Rings for two reasons: to help resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using real-world languages within his legendarium, and to lend realism by supporting a found manuscript conceit to frame his story.
J. R. R. Tolkien decided to increase the reader's feeling that the story in his 1954–55 book The Lord of the Rings was real, by framing the main text with an elaborate editorial apparatus that extends and comments upon it. This material, mainly in the book's appendices, effectively includes a fictional editorial figure much like himself who is interested in philology, and who says he is translating a manuscript which has somehow come into his hands, having somehow survived the thousands of years since the Third Age. He called the book a heroic romance, giving it a medieval feeling, and describing its time-frame as the remote past. Among the steps he took to make its setting, Middle-earth, believable were to develop its geography, history, peoples, genealogies, and unseen background in great detail, complete with editorial commentary in each case.
Margaret Carroux (1912–1991) was a German translator who translated from English and French into German. Born in Berlin into an international family, she studied economy, English and French before working as a commercial clerk and as foreign language correspondent. After World War II, she worked for the American military government before moving to Frankfurt, where she did translations and news agency work. In the 1960s, she started translating books; the first of more than eighty was Moshe Pearlman's The capture of Adolf Eichmann. Under the pseudonyms Martin Boor and Emmi Heimann, she translated books by Guillaume Chpaltine and Leopold Trepper from French to German.
