29 July: Lord of the Rings

On this date in 1954, the first part of The Lord of the Rings was published in the UK. 10 things you might not know about JRR Tolkien's most famous work.

1. Tolkien didn’t write it as a three volume set. It was his publisher who decided it should be split into three, purely for economic reasons - to minimise financial loss due to the high cost of type-setting and modest anticipated sales.
2. It started out as a sequel to his earlier book, The Hobbit, published in 1937. The publishers asked for one. Tolkien offered them some other tales he’d already written including drafts for The Silmarillion, but they weren’t interested because they wanted more stories about Hobbits. Tolkien agreed to write a new story but warned them that he wrote slowly. 
3. In fact, Lord of the Rings took 12 years to write. Tolkien started writing it at the age of 45 and by the time it was all published, he was 63. Part of the reason it took him so long was that he had a day job teaching linguistics. 
4. The title, Lord of the Rings, refers to the Dark Lord, Sauron, the main antagonist.
5. The titles of the three instalments (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King) could have been quite different. Tolkien’s original suggestion was The Lord of the Rings: Vol. 1, The Ring Sets Out and The Ring Goes South; Vol. 2, The Treason of Isengard and The Ring Goes East; Vol. 3, The War of the Ring and The End of the Third Age. Later on he suggested Vol. 1, The Shadow Grows; Vol. 2, The Ring in the Shadow; Vol. 3, The War of the Ring.
6. The books have sold 150 million copies and been translated into 38 languages, starting with Dutch in 1957, and including Polish, Hebrew and Esperanto. (I’d hoped to find that someone had translated it into Elvish or Klingon but neither was listed. Now there’s a challenge for some nerd out there somewhere…) 
7. A number of the characters and locations were inspired by places Tolkien lived in or visited as he was growing up. My regular readers will know that Mordor owes a lot to the Black Country; the Eye of Sauron my have been inspired by the Chamberlain Tower on the campus of Birmingham University; and that Bag End was the name of a farm owned by his aunt Jane. Others include the countryside around Stonyhurst College in Lancashire being a model for the Shire, and when Tolkien sailed past Stromboli, a volcano off Sicily, he claimed that he had "caught a glimpse of Mount Doom". 
8. Another major influence was Tolkien’s military service during World War I. The Dead Marshes and the area around the entrance to Mordor, according to Tolkien himself, “owe something to northern France after the Battle of the Somme". One critic even suggested that Frodo might have been suffering from shell-shock (better known today as post-traumatic stress disorder).
9.  No book escapes criticism, not even this one. Critics have complained about the lack of significant female characters, that it is too rustic (shouldn’t some of the characters live in cities?) that no mention is made of any formal religious practices (Tolkien wrote, "The religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism") and that it’s racist (races portrayed as good or evil and fighting against each other, all the major characters are white). 
10. Lord of the Rings has in turn influenced others – fantasy fiction in general owes a lot to Lord of the Rings. The game Dungeons and Dragons includes many of the races in the book such as hobbits (halflings) orcs and elves. Research has suggested that some players want to create for themselves an epic fantasy akin to Lord of the Rings (although I always found any storytelling aspect was somewhat stifled by rules). Pluto's largest moon, Charon, has a large dark area near its north pole. The dark area has been unofficially named Mordor Macula. It has influenced music, being the subject matter for many songs especially by rock and metal bands. There’s even a house in my street called “Rivendell.”

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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