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Curated playlist

Allen & Unwin books

  • The Monsters and the Critics, and Other EssaysTolkien argued that the monsters in the poem Beowulf deserve to be read as literature.
  • The Lord of the RingsA Collins contact told Tolkien that The Lord of the Rings "urgently wanted cutting."
  • The HobbitA publisher let his 10-year-old son decide whether to print The Hobbit.
  • The Adventures of Tom BombadilOnly one of the 16 poems in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was written for the book. The rest were older, one from 1915.
  • The SilmarillionThe Silmarillion opens with a song that one rebel spirit tries to ruin. Tolkien built a mythology from music.
  • The Two TowersTolkien was "not at all happy about the title The Two Towers." He never settled which two of five towers it meant.
  • The Return of the KingTolkien disliked the title The Return of the King because it gave away too much. He preferred The War of the Ring.
  • The Fellowship of the RingWas the scary-then-safe rhythm of The Fellowship of the Ring planned, or a writer finding his way?
  • Tree and LeafIn Tolkien's "Leaf by Niggle," a painter tries to finish a great canvas of a tree. Life, then death, interrupts.
  • The Road Goes Ever OnTolkien hummed a tune in a garden, and a composer used it. It became the song "Namárië" in The Road Goes Ever On.
  • Farmer Giles of HamIn Farmer Giles of Ham, a farmer tames a dragon instead of killing it. Tolkien wrote the comic fable in 1937.
  • Allen & UnwinThe publisher of The Hobbit kept its name only in Australia after 1986.

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