Red Book of Westmarch

The ''Red Book of Westmarch'' (sometimes the ''Thain's Book'' after its principal version) is a fictional manuscript written by hobbits, related to the author J. R. R. Tolkien's frame stories. It is an instance of the found manuscript conceit, a literary device to explain the source of his fantasy writings. The book is supposedly a collection of writings in which the events of ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' were recounted by their characters, and from which Tolkien supposedly derived these and other works. In the fiction, the name of the book comes from its red leather binding and casing, and from its having been housed in the Westmarch, a region of Middle-earth next to the Shire.

In reality, Tolkien modelled its name on the ''Red Book of Hergest''. By using the conceit of a found manuscript, he was following a tradition in English literature established by Samuel Richardson in the 18th century. He was also attempting, according to the scholar Gergely Nagy, to fit ''The Lord of the Rings'' into his presentation of his legendarium as a genuine-seeming collection of tales and myths, by ascribing the documents to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.

Fictional development

''There and Back Again''

In ''The Hobbit'', Tolkien writes of the protagonist and title character Bilbo Baggins composing his memoirs. Bilbo thinks of calling his work ''There and Back Again, A Hobbit's Holiday''., "The Last Stage" Tolkien's full name for the novel is indeed ''The Hobbit or There and Back Again''., Title page

In ''The Lord of the Rings'', this record is said to be written in his red leather-bound diary. Bilbo says to Gandalf that his intended ending would be him living "happily ever after to the end of his days". book 1, ch. 1 "A Long-expected Party" This is in fact a rephrased line from the final chapter of ''The Hobbit'', originally conveyed through third-person narrative voice.

''The Downfall of the Lord of the Rings''

Bilbo expands his memoirs into a record of the events of ''The Lord of the Rings'', including the exploits of his kinsman Frodo Baggins and others. He leaves the material for Frodo to complete and organize. book 6, ch. 6 "Many Partings" Frodo writes down the bulk of the final work, using Bilbo's diary and "many pages of loose notes". At the close of Tolkien's main narrative, the work is almost complete, and Frodo leaves the task to his gardener Samwise Gamgee., book 6, ch. 9 "The Grey Havens"

In the last chapter of ''The Return of the King'', Tolkien provides a "title page" for the ''Red Book of Westmarch'' inscribed with a succession of rejected titles. The final title is Frodo's:

Translations from the Elvish

Bilbo had translated material from Elvish lore from the Elder Days. This work, ''Translations from the Elvish, by B.B.'', comprised three volumes, also bound in red leather. After the defeat of Sauron (the Lord of the Rings) Bilbo gives these volumes to Frodo. These four volumes were "probably" (according to Tolkien) kept in a single red case., Prologue, "Note on the Shire Records"

''Red Book''

The volumes then pass into the keeping of Samwise Gamgee, Frodo's servant and later mayor of the Shire. In time, the volumes are left in the care of Sam's eldest daughter, Elanor Fairbairn, and her descendants (the ''Fairbairns of the Towers'' or ''Wardens of Westmarch''). A fifth volume containing Hobbit genealogical tables and commentaries is composed and added at an unknown date by unknown hands in Westmarch. This collection of writings is collectively called the ''Red Book of Westmarch''.

''Thain's Book''

Tolkien states that the original ''Red Book of Westmarch'' was not preserved, but that several copies, with various notes and later additions, were made. The first copy was made by request of King Elessar of Arnor and Gondor, and was brought to Gondor by Thain Peregrin I, who had been one of Frodo's companions. This copy was known as ''The Thain's Book'' and "contained much that was later omitted or lost". In Gondor it supposedly underwent much annotation and correction, particularly regarding Elvish languages. Also added was an abbreviated version of ''The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen'' by Faramir's grandson Barahir.

The story then runs that a copy of a revised and expanded ''Thain's Book'' was made probably by request of Peregrin's great-grandson and delivered to the Shire. It was written by the scribe ''Findegil'' and stored at the Took residence in ''Great Smials''. Tolkien says this copy was important because it alone contained the whole of Bilbo's ''Translations from the Elvish''.

This version somehow then survives until Tolkien's time, and he translates the ''Red Book'' from the original languages into English and other representative languages or varieties, such as Old English for Rohirric., Appendix F, "On Translation"

Related works

A similar work in some respects was the fictional ''Yearbook of Tuckborough'', the annals of the Took family of hobbits of Tuckborough. It was described as the oldest known book in the Shire, and was most likely kept at the Great Smials of Tuckborough. The story runs that it was begun around the year and chronicled events dating from the foundation of the Shire in T.A. 1601 onwards. For comparison, ''The Lord of the Rings'' commences in the year T.A. 3001.

The ''Yearbook'' recorded births, deaths, marriages, land-sales, and other events in Took history. Much of this information was later included in the ''Red Book of Westmarch''. Tolkien wrote that it was also known as the ''Great Writ of Tuckborough'' and ''the Yellowskin'', suggesting that it was bound in yellow leather or some other yellow material. Tolkien mentions several other supposedly historical documents related to the ''Red Book'', but it is unclear whether these were integrated into editions. These works include the ''Tale of Years'' (part of which was used as the timeline for ''The Lord of the Rings'') and ''Herblore of the Shire'', supposedly written by Frodo's contemporary Meriadoc Brandybuck, used for information about pipe-weed.

Relationship to Tolkien's Middle-earth books

As a memoir and history, the contents of the ''Red Book'' correspond to Tolkien's work as follows:

However, according to the Tolkien scholar Vladimir Brljak, readers are probably not intended to imagine Tolkien's published works as direct translations from the fictitious Red Book, but rather as Tolkien's own scholarly and literary adaptations of this supposed source material.

Some events and details concerning Gollum and the magic ring in the first edition of ''The Hobbit'' were rewritten for ''The Lord of the Rings''. ''The Hobbit'' was later revised for consistency. Tolkien explains the discrepancies as Bilbo's lies (influenced by the ring, now the sinister One Ring).

Analysis

Tolkien's inspiration for this repository of lore was the real ''Red Book of Hergest'', the early 15th century compilation of Welsh history and poetry that contains the manuscript of the '' Mabinogion''.Hooker, Mark T. ''Tolkienian mathomium: a collection of articles on J. R. R. Tolkien and his legendarium'', "The Feigned-manuscript Topos", pgs 176 and 177: "The 1849 translation of ''The Red Book of Hergest'' by Lady Charlotte Guest (1812-1895), which is more widely known as ''The Mabinogion'', is likewise of undoubted authenticity ... It is now housed in the library at Jesus College, Oxford. Tolkien's well-known love of Welsh suggests that he would have likewise been well-acquainted with the source of Lady Guest's translation.
For the Tolkiennymist, the coincidence of the names of the sources of Lady Charlotte Guest's and Tolkien's translations is striking: The Red Book of Hergest and the ''Red Book of Westmarch''. Tolkien wanted to write (translate) a mythology for England, and Lady Charlotte Guest's work can easily be said to be a 'mythology for Wales.' The implication of this coincidence is intriguing".

The title ''There and Back Again'' represents an archetypal Hobbit outlook on adventures. Frodo looks upon the going "there and back again" as an ideal throughout ''The Lord of the Rings'' similar to the Greek concept of νόστος (''nostos'', a heroic return). Tolkien's ''Red Book'', pastiche of scholarship though it is, functions as a medieval 'spurious source', but the 'authority' it imparts is by an appeal not to the tried-and-true but to the modern mystique of 'scholarly research'. The "found manuscript conceit", employed by Tolkien to situate ''The Hobbit'' as a part of ''The Red Book of Westmarch'', has been used in English literature since Samuel Richardson's novels ''Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded'' (1740) and '' Clarissa'' (1747–1748); Tolkien used it also in his incomplete time travel novel, ''The Notion Club Papers''.

Gergely Nagy notes that Tolkien wanted to present the complex set of writings of his legendarium as a seemingly-genuine collection of tales and myths within the frame of his fictional Middle-earth; he modified ''The Lord of the Rings'' to ascribe the documents to Bilbo, supposedly written in the years he spent in Rivendell, and preserved in the fictitious ''Red Book of Westmarch''.

File:Red.Book.of.Hergest.facsimile.png, The ''Red Book of Hergest'' inspired Tolkien to invent the ''Red Book of Westmarch''.
File:Richardson pamela 1741.jpg, Tolkien was following the tradition of Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel ''Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded'' in the conceit of a found manuscript.

Adaptations

In Peter Jackson's ''The Fellowship of the Ring'', ''There and Back Again'' provided the basis for the voiceover for the scene "Concerning Hobbits", greatly extended in the Special Extended Edition. Bilbo's writing of it provides his motive for wanting privacy in the film, substituting for a more complicated situation in the novel. Bilbo only says his line about his intended "happy ending" after he gives up the One Ring. The exchange is tweaked to symbolize Bilbo's unburdening from the great weight of the ring; he is freed to choose his own 'ending'. In Jackson's film version, the book that Bilbo hands over to Frodo is subtitled ''A Hobbit's Tale'' rather than ''A Hobbit's Holiday''. The ''Red Book'' in full (rather than just its title page) appears at the end of '' The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King''. In 1974, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published a one-volume edition of ''The Lord of the Rings'', bound in red imitation leather.

See also

* Frame story
* Story within a story

References

Primary

::''This list identifies each item's location in Tolkien's writings.''

Secondary

Sources

*
*
*

External links

Reproduction of the ''Red Book of Westmarch'' movie prop


describing the fictional origins and history of the ''Red Book''

BBC Radio 4 dramatisation
Bilbo retrieves his Red Book

{{DEFAULTSORT:Red Book Of Westmarch
Middle-earth objects
Fictional books
The Lord of the Rings
The Hobbit
The Silmarillion

pl:Lista ksiąg Śródziemia#Czerwona Księga Marchii Zachodniej