"FOREWORD" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol06)

for themselves, which was necessary for the tale. From The
Hobbit are also derived the matter of the Dwarves, Durin their
prime ancestor, and Moria; and Elrond. The passage in Ch. iii
relating him to the Half-elven of the mythology was a fortunate
accident, due to the difficulty of constantly inventing good
names for new characters. I gave him the name Elrond casually,
but as this came from the mythology (Elros and Elrond the two
sons of Earendel) I made him half-elven. Only in The Lord was

he identified with the son of Earendel, and so the great-
grandson of Luthien and Beren, a great power and a Ringholder.

How my father saw The Hobbit - specifically in relation to 'The
Silmarillion' - at the time of its publication is shown clearly in the
letter that he wrote to G. E. Selby on 14 December 1937:

I don't much approve of The Hobbit myself, preferring my own
mythology (which is just touched on) with its consistent no-
menclature - Elrond, Gondolin, and Esgaroth have escaped out
of it - and organized history, to this rabble of Eddaic-named
dwarves out of Voluspa, newfangled hobbits and gollums (in-
vented in an idle hour) and Anglo-Saxon runes.

The importance of The Hobbit in the history of the evolution of
Middle-earth lies then, at this time, in the fact that it was pub-
lished, and that a sequel to it was demanded. As a result, from the
nature of The Lord of the Rings as it evolved, The Hobbit was
drawn into Middle-earth - and transformed it; but as it stood in
I937 it was not a part of it. Its significance for Middle-earth lies in
what it would do, not in what it was.
Later, The Lord of the Rings in turn reacted upon The Hobbit
itself, in published and in (far more extensive) unpublished
revisions of the text; but all that lies of course far in the future at
the point which this History has reached.

In the manuscripts of The Lord of the Rings there is extreme
inconsistency in such matters as the use of capital letters and
hyphens, and the separation of elements in compound names. In
my representation of the texts I have not imposed any standard-
ization in this respect, though using consistent forms in my own
discussions.