C. S. Lewis’s Role in The Lord of the Rings

Origin Story

J. R. R. Tolkien always acknowledged that C. S. Lewis played a huge role in encouraging him to finish writing The Lord of the Rings. He was equally insistent that Lewis had no influence on the actual content of The Lord of the Rings. On this second matter, Tolkien may not have been entirely honest with himself, or perhaps, he may simply not have been very self-aware.

The Lord of the Rings was a sidetrack from Tolkien’s real writing project, the mythology of his created world of Middle-earth. That mythology is a collection of tales that spans thousands of years from the creation of his imagined world down through several ages. Tolkien never quite finished his work on this mythology which he called The Simarillion. When he died, he left a trove of disordered manuscripts that his son, Christopher Tolkien, devoted his life to editing into a publishable form.

Tolkien embarked on writing The Lord of the Rings in response to a prompting from Stanley Unwin, the publisher of The Hobbit, that he should write another hobbit book. The Hobbit had met with some financial success for the firm of Allen & Unwin, but more to the point, Tolkien had reaped a modest financial reward from his children’s story. Money was always an issue, so Tolkien began to write. The hobbit stories of Tolkien represent significant departures from the kind of mythological and legendary stories that Tolkien had been writing for The Silmarillion. The Hobbit has a different kind of plot. Read More