Sauron Defeated (History of Middle-Earth)

In the first part of Sauron Defeated, Christopher Tolkien completes his account of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, beginning with Sam's rescue of Frodo from the Tower of Kirith Ungol, and giving a very different account of the Scouring of the Shire. This part ends with versions of the previously unpublished Epilogue, an alternate ending to the masterpiece in which Sam attempts to answer his children's questions years after the departure of Bilbo and Frodo from the Grey Havens. The second part introduces The Notion Club Papers, now published for the first time. Written by J.R.R. Tolkien in the interval between The Two Towers and The Return of the King (1945-1946), these mysterious Papers, discovered in the early years of the twenty-first century, report the discussions of a literary club in Oxford in the years 1986-1987. Those familiar with the Inklings will see a parallel with the group whose members included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. After a discussion of the possiblities of travel through space and time through the medium of 'true dream," the story turns to the legend of Atlantis, the strange communications received by members of the club out of remote past, and the violent irruption of the legend into northwestern Europe. Closely associated with the Papers is a new version of the Numenorean legend, The Drowning of Anadune, which constitutes the third part of the book. At this time the language of the Men of the West, Adunaic, was first devised - Tolkien's fifteenth invented language. The book concludes with an elaborate account of the structure of this language by Arundel Lowdham, a member of the Notion Club, who learned it in his dreams. Sauron Defeated is illustrated with the changing conceptions of the fortress of Kirith Ungol and Mount Doom, previously unpublished drawings of Orthanc and Dunharrow, and fragments of manuscript written in Numenorean script.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fantasy, Nonfiction, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.