The Fall of Gondolin

by J.R.R. Tolkien

I knew that long before, when The Lord of the Rings was finished but well before its publication, my father had expressed a deep wish and conviction that the First Age and the Third Age (the world of The Lord of the Rings) should be treated, and published, as elements, or parts, of the same work. In the chapter of this book, The Evolution of the Story, I have printed parts of a long and very revealing letter that he wrote to his publisher, Sir Stanley Unwin, in February 1950, very soon after the actual writing of The Lord of the Rings had reached its end, in which he unburdened his mind on this matter. At that time he portrayed himself self-mockingly as horrified when he contemplated ‘this impracticable monster of some six hundred thousand words’ – the more especially when the publishers were expecting what they had demanded, a sequel to The Hobbit, while this new book (he said) was ‘really a sequel to The Silmarillion’. He never modified his opinion. He even wrote of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings as ‘one long Saga of the Jewels and the Rings’. He held out against the separate publication of either work on those grounds. But in the end he was defeated, as will be seen in The Evolution of the Story, recognizing that there was no hope that his wish would be granted: and he consented to the publication of The Lord of the Rings alone.