Mistaken Notions:
Many critics have written about The Lord of the Rings: Many have written worthy interpretations and more than a few have written egregiously absurd and erroneous theories that one might wonder if they suffered from a literary blindness. In this portion of my web site, I intend to dispel some of these mistakes and conjectures with proofs from the author of The Lord of the Rings as well as my own theories. However, I shall not be able to work on this website for some weeks in the early Summer, so yes, this site is incomplete. At this time, I shall merely set out some of the most frequent mistakes from critics and passersby and disprove them with passages from Tolkien's letters. I have extracted these passages from the book The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien edited by Humphrey Carpenter. If I am making any legal infringements on this web site, which is intended for personal, not commercial, use, please inform me that I may fix my errors and not fall prey to some litigious yahoo.
Some of these web pages will contain references to The Silmarillion, Tolkien's posthumously published work that tells of the ages before that in which The Lord of the Rings is place. It must be noted that originally The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion were to be either published together or with The Silmarillion being published first. However, The Silmarillion is a more difficult work and Tolkien was unable to have it published before The Lord of the Rings. In fact, Tolkien had many a difficulty having The Lord of the Rings published as some thought that it would not sell.
Much of the material on these pages has been researched but compiled without second and third readings. These pages will all be added to and revised but not before early or mid Summer. Please be lenient with spelling and grammatical errors. I would very much like to hear comments from any readers. Perhaps I shall set up a comment page or something. However, it is certain that if anybody has a bone to pick and a genuine theory to explore, I will be happy to post and remark on and even debate with you.
Thank you.
