The Return of the Shadow
The Return of the Shadow, published in 1988, is the sixth volume of Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume book series, The History of Middle-earth, in which he analyzes the unpublished manuscripts of J.R.R. Tolkien.
It is also the first volume of The History of The Lord of the Rings, which documents the writing process of The Lord of the Rings.
This book covers a larger part of the content of The Fellowship of the Ring. It encompasses TLotR's three initial stages of composition or, as Christopher Tolkien calls them, "phases", including what Tolkien later called "the crucial chapter" which sets up the central plot, "The Shadow of the Past". It finishes with the Fellowship of the Ring entering the Mines of Moria.
The title The Return of the Shadow was a discarded title for The Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien also conceived titles for each of the six Books of TLotR, which he later discarded. Some of these were used as titles for the following volumes.
Contents
- Foreword
- The First Phase
- — I. "A Long-expected Party"
- — II. "From Hobbiton to the Woody End"
- — III. "Of Gollum and the Ring"
- — IV. "To Maggot's Farm and Buckland"
- — V. "The Old Forest and the Withywindle"
- — VI. "Tom Bombadil"
- — VII. "The Barrow-wight"
- — VII. "Arrival at Bree"
- — IX. "Trotter and the Journey to Weathertop"
- — X. "The Attack on Weathertop"
- — XI. "From Weathertop to the Ford"
- — XII. "At Rivendell"
- — XIII. "Queries and Alterations"
- The Second Phase
- — XIV. "Return to Hobbiton"
- — XV. "Ancient History"
- — XVI. "Delays Are Dangerous"
- — XVII. "A Short Cut to Mushrooms"
- — XVIII. "Again from Buckland to the Withywindle"
- The Third Phase
- — XIX. "The Journey to Bree"
- — XX. "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony"
- — XXI. "To Weathertop and Rivendell"
- — XXII. "New Uncertainties and New Projections"
- The Story Continued
- — XXIII. "In the House of Elrond"
- — XXIV. "The Ring Goes South"
- — XXV. "The Mines of Moria"
- Index
Inscriptions
There is an inscription in the Tengwar characters in the first pages of every History of Middle-earth volume, written by Christopher Tolkien and describing the contents of the book. The inscription in Book VI reads:
"In the Return of the Shadow are traced the first forms of the story of the Lord of the Rings; herein the journey of the Hobbit who bore the Great Ring, at first named Bingo but afterwards Frodo, is followed from Hobbiton in the Shire through the Old Forest to Weathertop and Rivendel, and ends in this volume before the Tomb of Balin, the Dwarf-lord of Moria."
Publication history and gallery
UK editions
- Unwin Hyman, hardcover (1988), pp. 480. ISBN 0044401620
- Unwin Paperbacks, paperback (1990), ISBN 004440669X - (cover art by Roger Garland)
- HarperCollins hardcover (1991), ISBN 0261102036
- HarperCollins paperback (1994), ISBN 0261102249 - (cover art by John Howe)
- — 1994 paperback edition, reset in 2002, then in 2015
- HarperCollins hardcover (2010), ISBN 0007365306
- — 2015 paperback edition, 33rd impression (2024)
- HarperCollins hardcover with reversable dustjacket (2024), ISBN 978-0063390843 (set) - (Centenary Boxed Sets #3)
Referencias
1. Esta ficha se ha importado inicialmente de TolkienGateway.net el día 30/05/2026.
