0393: The Lord of the Rings » Prologue » Mathoms

What did we miss in the Foreword and Prologue to The Lord of the Rings? In Episode 393 of The Tolkien Road, John goes back through some fascinating “mathoms” from Do Not Be Hasty—from Tolkien’s rejected Silmarillion and savage early reviews to allegory, Sarehole Mill, the origins of “Hobbit” and “Dwarves,” the meaning of Middle-earth, and more. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHAPTERS 00:00 — Introduction 00:44 — What Is a Mathoms Episode? 01:49 — Tolkien and the “Impression of Depth” 03:29 — Why Publishers Rejected The Silmarillion 04:52 — Could Silmarillion Stories Become Novels? 07:23 — The Worst Early LOTR Reviews 09:23 — “Juvenile Trash”? 11:00 — Tolkien Was Supposedly Already Forgotten 13:35 — Tolkien on Allegory 15:00 — Allegory vs. Applicability 17:03 — Sarehole Mill and the Real Shire 18:11 — Tolkien Returns to His Lost Paradise 22:14 — Prologue Mathoms 22:19 — Did Tolkien Invent “Hobbit”? 25:30 — Why Tolkien Wrote “Dwarves” 28:03 — How Tolkien Imagined Hobbits 29:21 — Middle-earth Is Our World 30:58 — What Arnor and Gondor Mean 32:46 — Marcho and Blanco 34:09 — What “Angmar” Means 35:35 — The Shire Is Rural England 37:11 — Where “Shirriff” Comes From 38:40 — Tolkien Rewrites Bilbo’s Ring Story 40:13 — What “Samwise” Means 41:28 — The Meaning of Elrond 42:48 — Final Thoughts ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE SILMARILLION WAS REJECTED In 1937, Tolkien submitted Silmarillion material for publication. It was considered too strange and difficult, though Stanley Unwin believed its stories might be mined for books more like The Hobbit. That raises an interesting possibility: could individual Silmarillion stories have become full-length novels? The Children of Húrin shows what that might look like. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THEY CALLED LOTR “JUVENILE TRASH” Some early critics dismissed The Lord of the Rings as childish, simplistic, or doomed to be forgotten. History had other plans. The reviews also reveal the divide between Tolkien and parts of the literary establishment that never quite knew what to make of him. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ALLEGORY VS. APPLICABILITY Tolkien was not opposed to readers finding deeper meaning in stories. He objected to deliberately constructing stories as rigid one-to-one allegories. A good story can apply naturally to many experiences because readers bring their own lives to it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOBBITS, DWARVES, AND MIDDLE-EARTH Did Tolkien invent “Hobbit”? Almost certainly in the form we know it. Why “Dwarves” instead of “Dwarfs”? Tolkien preferred the form suggested by the word’s older linguistic history. And Middle-earth is not another planet. It is our world imagined in a distant mythological age. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE SHIRE IS ENGLAND Tolkien explicitly said that, if we drop the fiction, the Shire is rural England. Sarehole and the countryside of Tolkien’s childhood strongly influenced its creation. The Hobbits may live in an ancient mythological world, but culturally they carry Victorian rural England with them. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ BILBO’S STORY Tolkien changed Bilbo’s account of finding the Ring because The Lord of the Rings required a more sinister Ring. Inside the story, that revision becomes evidence that the Ring was already affecting Bilbo. A real-world rewrite becomes part of Middle-earth’s lore. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE BIG TAKEAWAY With Tolkien, even the smallest details have histories. Words, names, places, manuscripts, and revisions all lead somewhere deeper. That is why these little “mathoms” are so rewarding: they show just how thoroughly Tolkien built his world. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SPECIAL THANKS • Caitlin of Tea with Tolkien • John R. • KG • A.R. Endale Hope • Alan C. • Stephanie B.