WI Tolkien publishes Silmarillion before writing LOTR?

[Evan]

Shortly after The Hobbit became a surprise success, Tolkien submitted an early draft of The Silmarillion and The Lay of Leithian to his publishers, Allen and Unwin. They rejected it as too confusing and too poorly designed to interest a large audience and instead asked Tolkien for "more about hobbits." Somewhat disappointed, Tolkien began work on what would later become The Lord of the Rings. So what if Allen and Unwin decided to accept Silmarillion? It seems the reviewer who was sent The Lay of Leithian (a narrative poem about Beren and Luthien) never got the rest of Silmarillion, so he tried to evaluate it as historical fiction - and, of course, got very confused. Maybe one PoD could be that they send both to the same reviewer?

Recall that the 1930's Silmarillion was different from the published text. I think Tolkien at the time had gotten to the drafts later collected in the (posthumously published) History of Middle-Earth V: The Lost Road: the plot elements were mostly the same, but the style abruptly switched between brief timelines, "fairy-tale" feeling, and a few fully-developed scenes. I'd presume that the publishers would tell Tolkien to tidy up the style, but it could go in any number of directions.

So, this timeline would have Hobbit and Silmarillion (probably without any explicit references tying them into the same world) but no Lord of the Rings. (At the time, Tolkien hadn't even gotten the idea for the Rings of Power, and I don't think he would afterward - it came to him when looking for some possible reason for Frodo to go adventuring.) Judging from Tolkien's interests at the time, I think any future novel would've focused more on Numenor. How do you think this would be received? Would Silmarillion get anywhere near as much popularity as Lord of the Rings? How would this impact pop culture and the fantasy genre?

 

[Swan Station]

Having read and enjoyed the Silmarillion, I have a feeling that it has little chance of happening. Having said that, I don't know what the 1930's Silmarillion was like, considering the version I read definitely talked about the One Ring.

Mostly, I think the publishers would have a hard time with this... like you said, how would you sell it? It's not a novel (there's no primary protagonist who drives the plot). It's not historical fiction. The closest similar literature would be the ancient and classical mythological epics, but you obviously can't sell it as that either.

Maybe, they could get him to divide it into multiple books, each a separate novel set in a different age of Middle-Earth, and each one having a short enough timespan that you don't feel like you're reading a history book. This type of thing could lead to him being marketed as a more literate version of Robert E. Howard.

There's the problem, of course, that his previous book was marketed for children. So, he might have to fight with them over the marketing of this as well. He might end up making Hobbits older than he'd originally intended them to be, in order for them to appear in more of the books.

I could see that sort of thing replacing LOTR in the fantasy literature, and giving Tolkein plenty of work to do for the rest of his life so that something like LOTR never gets written. It would lead to Tolkein copycats tending to write more longer series about different characters set in the same world, and the "Trilogy" may not become dominant.

Filming of these books might also come a little earlier, since you don't have to do the entire series to get it right. Although, the required special effects still have to wait until the 1990's, so it's probably first a cheesy cartoon series in the 70's. Bigger changes on the timeline don't really start happening until then.

 

[AndyC]

Well, from the History of Middle Earth books, it seems that he had a vision for three main story threads to follow in an expanded Silmarillion:

- The Story of Beren and Luthien (that was put into verse in Lay of Leithan)
- The Tale of the Children of Hurin (eventually published separately a couple of years ago)
- The Fall of Gondolin.

His original framing narrative was of tales told to a lost mariner - it seems highly probable that tales written down by Bilbo would have been the final conceit. The above tales could also have spawned expansion of tales leading from them (he began writing a tale on "The Wanderings of Hurin" after the end of the Tale of the Children of Hurin, which would have linked up with the aborted expansion of the Tale of the Dwarves Necklace (which also linked with the end of Beren and Luthien); The Voyages of Earendil could have followed The Fall of Gondolin).

The rest of the First Age would have been summarised as a lead-up to the first of the tales. Unfortunately, Tolkien was cursed with revisionitis and perfectionism - he was never satisfied with how the story played out. The only one of those stories that came even close to readiness for publication was the Tale of the Children of Hurin. The Fall of Gondolin was never properly revised since its first draft in ~1917-1920, apart from an aborted 12-page or so redraft of the opening (which ends just before the hero gets his first glimpse of Gondolin!). The Dwarves Necklace was never revised, which game Christopher Tolkien serious problems in hammering it to fit with the rest of the published Silmarillion.

Tolkien ended up throwing his entire mythology out of the window and starting again from scratch to try to fit with contemporary astronomy and geology. In short, he had plenty of time to write the Silmarillion in the publishable form that he'd envisaged, but was incapable of sticking with a single form of the stories without re-re-re-re-re-re-revising. I think that if he'd not had (benign but definite) pressure from Unwin to push through with the Lord of the Rings, he'd have published nothing in his central Middle-Earth corpus during his lifetime, sadly.

Maybe - just maybe - if Unwin had grasped the themes he was writing about in the Silmarillion, he'd have pushed Tolkien to stick with a single theme long enough. What Tolkien desperately needed was a forced limiter on his imagination. A structure imposed that he had to stick to.

And with all of this - would the stories of the Silmarillion really have grasped the public without the Lord of the Rings coming first?

Maybe a better divergence would have been: What If Tolkien hadn't succumbed to the lure of his "Myths Transformed" phase and become distracted in trying to redo the entire fabric of his mythos?

 

[joea64]

Another, related WI: What if Tolkien had gone ahead with his original plan to frame the Middle-earth mythos in a time-travel narrative? As others well-versed in the lore will recall, one of the main impetuses for the development of the epic was an agreement/challenge between himself and his close friend C.S. Lewis to write parallel stories; Lewis would write a space-travel story (which eventually became the Silent Planet trilogy), while Tolkien would go at it from the time-travel angle. One of the History of Middle-earth books (I think it was the last one) even had several fragments of story drafts concerning a group of modern-day academics afflicted by vivid visions of the Downfall of Numenor.

 

[Thande]

I know everything about this. The 1930s version of the Silmarillion had nearly everything we associate with the final version, except it didn't mesh too well with what came later. If Tolkien published the Silmarillion then, it's questionable whether he would even have The Hobbit set in the same universe. I tend to think if the Silmarillion was at least a modest success (or even if it wasn't) he might next write some variant of The Lost Road rather than a LOTR-type work because it would follow on directly from the Silmarillion.

 

[Evan]

Mostly, I think the publishers would have a hard time with this... like you said, how would you sell it? It's not a novel (there's no primary protagonist who drives the plot). It's not historical fiction. The closest similar literature would be the ancient and classical mythological epics, but you obviously can't sell it as that either.

Maybe, they could get him to divide it into multiple books, each a separate novel set in a different age of Middle-Earth, and each one having a short enough timespan that you don't feel like you're reading a history book. This type of thing could lead to him being marketed as a more literate version of Robert E. Howard.

That's definitely an idea; he certainly had enough stuff there to write three or four books. IOTL, Allen and Unwin suggested Silmarillion might make a good mine for future book material. They meant stuff like Hobbit and LOTR, but it might not be too much of a stretch to make it stuff like Geste of Beren and Luthien... maybe? I don't know about Robert E. Howard, though - how did his books fit together?

Another, related WI: What if Tolkien had gone ahead with his original plan to frame the Middle-earth mythos in a time-travel narrative?... One of the History of Middle-earth books (I think it was the last one) even had several fragments of story drafts concerning a group of modern-day academics afflicted by vivid visions of the Downfall of Numenor.

That's HOME V: The Lost Road. I don't think he'd try to frame the whole mythos as that; all we see there is the Downfall of Numenor (and notes hinting at several other, historical episodes.) It's possible that the publishers might've grabbed at that as a unifying theme and set of characters, but in my opinion, that would've been an inferior story. A time-travel story, I think, needs to be treated carefully so the time-travelers don't steal the plot from the downtimers. What's more, Tolkien's time travelers didn't grab me as sympathetic characters!

We might see a framing story, though... Remind me, Thande, was Eriol/Aelfwine still around in the 1930's draft? Like Andy says, it's a short jump from him to Bilbo, if Tolkien wants to directly tie in The Hobbit. (And if he wants to get Bilbo involved with adventures again - the last time we part, the narrator says, "And he lived happily ever after to the end of his days, which were exceedingly long.")

Anyway, I agree with Thande - The Lost Road is probably his next work, unless the audience still demands "something about hobbits."

And with all of this - would the stories of the Silmarillion really have grasped the public without the Lord of the Rings coming first?

Great question. I don't know - what does everyone else think?

 

[Thande]

Great question. I don't know - what does everyone else think?

Not the Silmarillion itself, I think, but the "Lost Tales" type framing story certainly could if he was persuaded to bring it back. Maybe combine it with "The Lost Road" as he intended to at one point. Or perhaps a more contemporary connection as with "The Notion Club Papers" (although that would butterfly the point made by Terry Pratchett that Tolkien was essentially the first popular fantasy writer to create free-standing worlds without a 'stranger in a strange land' from our world and time).

 

[Swan Station]

I don't know about Robert E. Howard, though - how did his books fit together?

Howard wrote a number of book serials, he would probably be categorized as pulp fiction really. Of note here is that he created three series (Conan the Barbarian, Kull of Atlantis, and Bran Mac Morn) which were each set in a different age of the the same mythological world -- which was also supposed to be our world in prehistoric times. That's pretty much as far as the parallels with Tolkein go, however.

In thinking about this further, one could also compare pieces of the Silmarillion to the works of Lord Dunsany, if Tolkien released some of his more polished parts as short stories. A number of Dunsany's stories seemed to be small views of some larger works which were never finished. I think the problem, however, as has been mentioned, is Tolkein wanted everything he wrote about the world to be consistent, so he can't release until he's absolutely sure.

 

[AndyC]

The Bilbo framing conceit could indeed be easily developed - remember that in LoTR, Frodo received "books of lore" from Bilbo when the latter passed over Sea. In the Second Edition, these became "Three red leather-bound volumes".

Tolkien saw LoTR and Silmarillion to be of approximately equal sizes

"The whole Saga of the Three Jewels and the Rings of Power has only one natural division into two parts (each of about 600,000 words): The Silmarillion and other legends; and The Lord of the Rings

So - like LoTR, three volumes/six books. From HoME, it could have fallen out beautifully:

Volume 1: Book 1 - The Silmarils; Book 2 - Beren and Luthien
Volume 2: Book 3 - The Children of Hurin; Book 4 - Wanderings of Hurin
Volume 3: Book 5 - Fall of Gondolin; Book 6 - Dwarven Necklace/Voyages/War of Wrath
Plus Appendices.

So the Three Great Tales, plus a framer to start (book one) and one to finish off (Book 6).

The infuriating thing is that it could have happened. It was in the late 1950's that he threw out the background creation/astronomical mythos of the Silmarillion with a "more scientifically accurate" attempt, but found it incredibly difficult to reconcile with the stories. That distraction was what killed off the imagined Silmarillion above.

I can almost see them in the bookstores: "The Silmarillion Volume One: The War of the Jewels"; "The Silmarillion Volume Two: The Curse of Morgoth"; "The Silmarillion Volume Three: The War of Wrath"

 

[Thande]

I can almost see them in the bookstores: "The Silmarillion Volume One: The War of the Jewels"; "The Silmarillion Volume Two: The Curse of Morgoth"; "The Silmarillion Volume Three: The War of Wrath"

I've actually thought about how they could split it into three for a film trilogy, and I like your titles a lot.

However I doubt anything like LOTR would ever be written if he had published the Silmarillion in the 1930s--he would almost certainly focus on Númenor and hobbits would be another forgotten dalliance like Mr Bliss and Roverandom.

 

[Snake Featherston]

It might work if the stories are split up into four tales:

The Lay of Lethian, then the Children of Hurin, the Fall of Gondolin, and the War of Wrath that sets up the sequence of the Lord of the Rings. An interesting question with that last one is the possibility of Anacalagon serving as a Tolkien-Kaiju of sorts in any 21st Century film adaptation. I'd also love to see Glaurung on film.

 

[lloyd007]

It might just be me because I personally strongly disliked the Silmarillion (i.e. the Elvish Phone Book) but I don't think the book would be successful and might hurt Tolkien on his later endeavors like LotR. It just doesn't read well and I don't think Tolkien would be able to stand the amount of slicing and dicing an editor would do to it to make it coherent.

I loved the Hobbit. Read it after watching the animated movie at age 10... thought the book was better. Like LotR, read it at 13, although to be honest I like the Peter Jackson and the animated adaptations of it better*. But when I read the Silmarillion it was just... do I really have to make a freaking flow chart to understand this thing?

*Yes, even the really godawful animated adaptation of RotK, it was my first exposure to Tolkien at 8 years and to an 8 year old it was AWESOME!

 

[Art]

I know what you mean Lloyd, I've read the

History of the Hobbit, most of the 12 set History of Middle Earth, Roverandom, Leaf and Niggle, Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith Wooton Major, but I STILL haven't gotten around to reading the Silmarillion. I've TRYED, many times, but I just can't get started. It is funny that the book Tolkien started writing in the trenches of the Somme and was not finished until his death should be the book less remembered, and that the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, which he wrote for amusement and to open up the mythological world of his "fantasy history of the English people", and of the Germanic and Nordic people who made up the core of those people who are 'called' English. He felt that the English mythology that had existed had been destroyed by the Norman Conquest, and that England lacked a mythology, so he set out to invent one. Only a man who was a linguist would have taken such a route. I have the extended version of the Peter Jackson DVDs, and that point was stressed again and again. Tolkien was not a 'professional' writer, and he got away with things a professional would not have tried.