Who wrote the Red Book of Westmarch?
Bilbo Baggins wrote the initial volume titled There and Back Again at Bag End. Frodo Baggins expanded the work to include his own exploits, and Samwise Gamgee later added notes from friends who witnessed events.
Bilbo Baggins wrote the initial volume titled There and Back Again at Bag End. Frodo Baggins expanded the work to include his own exploits, and Samwise Gamgee later added notes from friends who witnessed events.
Bilbo Baggins wrote the words There and Back Again on the first page during a meeting with Gandalf at a party in the Shire. He continued writing memoirs covering his journey from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain and back again before passing the bulk of the final work to Samwise Gamgee when he departed for the Grey Havens.
The physical books remained in the care of the Fairbairns of the Towers or Wardens of Westmarch until scribes in Gondor copied them. Thain Peregrin I brought a copy known as The Thain's Book to Gondor at the request of King Elessar, while another version written by Findegil was stored at the Took residence in Great Smials.
J.R.R. Tolkien utilized the found manuscript device to present his legendarium as genuine historical records rather than pure fiction. Scholar Gergely Nagy notes that Tolkien wanted to fit The Lord of the Rings into his presentation of his legendarium as a genuine-seeming collection of tales supposedly written during years spent in Rivendell.
In Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, There and Back Again provided the basis for voiceover scenes concerning Hobbits, with the Special Extended Edition greatly extending this sequence. The full Red Book appeared at the end of The Return of the King, where Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published a one-volume edition bound in red imitation leather in 1974.