Dense and certainly not for everyone, but fascinating and full of intriguing odds and ends about the creation of the Lord of the Rings series. Tolkien originally intended Aragorn marry Eowyn! It's amazing how late some very essential plot points (like Arwen) enter the story at all.

The plot absolutely engaging.

Another fascinating read if you are a Tolkien nerd who loves LotR, wants to know the history of its writing, and can accept that the story evolved massively over the 17 years it took to be written and published. Finished reading it in just one week. This book returns to yet more development of the early chapters covered in Book 6 (which goes as far as Balin’s tomb and an outline including Gandalf’s death) but extends as far as the King of the Golden Hall.

Apart from the chapter on the evolution of the first maps (which I found as dull as the chapter in The Silmarillion “Of Beleriand and its Realms”) and the Appendix on runes (which I simply don’t understand properly, having had no training in phonetics) the rest of this book was again completely absorbing and I wish I’d read it back in 1989 (36 years ago), when I first bought it, instead of being so put off by Book 2 in this series that I gave up on reading them.

As before the changes to characters names and to the story, sometimes even as it is first written and sometimes a while later as fair copies or typescripts are made, is absolutely fascinating. So much made it into the final version almost as first written, and yet so much was also completely rejected or took many re-writes to become the text we all now know.

I was particularly pleased to note that the reference to Merry as the extremely dismissive “other” when Aragorn finds Pippin’s brooch is simply a misprint and it should always have been “others” i.e. Pippin is smaller than ALL the other hobbits, not just Merry (you know, the “other” one who I can’t be bothered to name

From Rivendell to Rohan
It is undeniable that what pushes a reader to go through several versions of the same narrative goes beyond the simple curiosity. There is a sort of affectionate awe in discovering how, layer after layer the personality of known characters are shaped, structured and anchored deep into the legendarium that defined a genre in the XXth century. We readers are not here for the pretty story anymore, but to feel the blood and bones of a myth being born.

Here below my reviews to the previous volumes of the History of Middle-earth:
Vol.1: n  Sit down and listenn
Vol.2: n  Heroics of a young authorn
Vol.3: n  The poet of Middle-earthn
Vol.4: n  Sketches and Annals of the First Agen
Vol.5: n  A glimpse of Númenorn
Vol.6: n  When Trotter led the wayn

The one thing I will say in favor of this book, and this part of the series more generally, is that when I first read Lord of the Rings, I found it daunting. There was so much going on that I didn't fully understand how this world worked or why certain things were happening. The Treason of Isengard and the History of Lord of the Rings give insight that I would have loved when I first read the series.

La Traición De Isengard.- J.R.R. Tolkien⁣
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"Regresaré a ti y te volveré a buscar,⁣
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 regresaré a ti y te confortaré, y te⁣
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 encontraré en la lluvia. Juntos⁣
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 caminaremos por la tierra y⁣
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 recogeremos la semilla y el fruto y⁣
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 viajaremos a una isla donde los dos⁣
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 podamos vivir de nuevo."⁣
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La Traición De Isengard es el segundo volumen de la Historia De El Señor De Los Anillos, una serie de libros editados por Christopher Tolkien donde se muestra la evolución a través de los años de la escritura de esta monumental obra.⁣
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En esta etapa de la escritura de ESDLA, año 1942, tenemos otro cambio en Trotter, ya está cerca de ser el Aragorn que todos conocemos, se reescribe parte del viaje de Hobbiton a Bree, Hamilcar Bolger (luego Fredegar) tiene una participación mayor, tiene las primeras apariciones Saramund (luego Saruman), vemos la evolución del Concilio de Elrond mediante varias versiones, tenemos el primer contacto con Galadriel, una versión un tanto distinta de la muerte de Boromir, un borrador escrito sobre otro borrador describiendo a los Jinetes de Rohan y (entre otros muchos más temas) la historia de la escritura de Barbol y el primer mapa hecho por Tolkien de ESDLA. También resulta muy interesante el capítulo final dedicado a las Runas que se leen la tumba de Balin en Moría.⁣
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Cómo en el caso del libro anterior de la serie, El Retorno De La Sombra, esta no es una lectura para iniciarse en El Señor De Los Anillos o en la Tierra Media, sin dudas estos libros están pensados para quien tenga bien presente la historia finalmente publicada y poder así apreciar mejor el tremendo trabajo de escritura que hizo nuestro querido Profesor. ⁣
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Christopher Tolkien has continued to do a good job at assembling all of his father's notes and drafts, and putting them together in some sort of semblance of a "narrative arc" where you can see the final story of The Lord of the Rings come together. Lots of fun little facts are revealed, and it's very interesting to see what could have been (with a little relief on occasion that he made different choices!).

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1849441...

The most interesting point for me was that Frodo and Sam's path to Mordor, and even back to the Shire, emerged in Tolkien's thinking much earlier than the story of the others after the death of Boromir. He seems to almost make up the tale of Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn as he goes along, and I must admit it's not the most satisfying part of the book (and was the most messed around with by Peter Jackson for the film). In the middle of this, however, the Treebeard chapter stands out as a coming together of long-simmering ideas for Tolkien, who was fascinated by trees and forests and had been dropping foreshadowing references to Treebeard into his drafts without really thinking them through.

Tolkien took great care over names. It's a bit jarring to read "Trotter" instead of "Strider", "Ingolf" instead of "Aragorn" and "Ondor" instead of "Gondor", but I think it's not just familiarity with the final product - the eventually chosen names are genuinely better. There are a very few exceptions - Tolkien was not happy with "Osgiliath", and I think rightly so, but didn't find a good alternative. Irish readers find it amusing that one of Treebeard's fellow elder Ents is named Finglas; this name is there in the very first draft.

I noted with interest that all the early examples of runes - basically Gandalf's messages left at Bree and scrawled at Weathertop - use the good old-fashioned futhark, rather than what we came to know as the Cirth. The switch was made while composing the inscription on Balin's tomb in Moria, and implemented consistently after that. The development of the runes shows off Tolkien's deep knowledge of phonetics; you would expect him to have some familiarity with the subject as a philologist, but clearly it was a profound fascination. (Do you pronounce the 'o's differently in 'Lord' and 'Moria'? I don't, but Tolkien evidently did, going by his first drafts.)

Anyway, much enjoying this reconstruction of how the classic came to be.

Fascinating.

Not the kind of thing to read straight through, even for a Tolkien geek like me, but I'm glad I was able to finish it within the 12 weeks the library allowed me.

A really good companion if you love Tolkien and want to discover his writing process when he write his masterpiece. If not, I’d advice you to leave this be.

It is really interesting to see many alternative on how the story could have gone. Reading this, you start to understand how much work and thinking Tolkien put into his work.
As a regular Tolkien fan, you know it already but reading here all the alternatives (and yet not all of them are even here) about the story, quotes or the multiple names in several drafts, that Christopher Tolkien presents to us. Many excerpts written in now fading pencil draft, crossed sentences on many supports.

Christopher Tolkien underlines the main differences, with all of his father’s source material at hands, between the drafts and the final version.

You’ll discover that Aragorn had many names, Theoden had a daughter for a little while, an analysis of the evolution of the maps and other tidbits of alternative what-ifs which are really neat to know.

This book is really for people who want to dig even more into Tolkien’s world and love to read more academic oriented works as it’s very complete with many notes.

@TolkienKC completed a concurrent group read of The Treason of Isengard and the fist half of the first book of The Two Towers in September of 2019. Check the Tolkien Society of Kansas City Facebook page for details.

Insightful, illuminating, fascinating.