J.R.R. Tolkien - Bilbos Last Song: At the Grey Havens

J.R.R. Tolkien was born in 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, but came to England with his mother at the age of three and a half. After serving in the First World War he became a distinguished professor of Anglo-Saxon and later of English Language and Literature at Oxford University. His first work of fiction, The Hobbit, was published in 1937. The Lord of the Rings, his masterpiece, took twelve years to write and was originally published in three volumes between 1954 and 1955. Tolkien said of this great work, It is written in my life blood, such as that is, thick or thin; and I can do no other. The author died at Oxford in 1973 at the age of eighty-one.

Pauline Baynes was born in Hove, Sussex, in 1922 and studied at Farnham School of Art and later at the Slade. Her association with Tolkien began when he chose her to illustrate Farmer Giles of Ham, and she went on to illustrate several of his books including The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wotton Major and Tree and Leaf. As well as being Tolkiens favourite artist she was also chosen by C.S. Lewis to illustrate the Narnia books.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Text copyright 1974 by The Order of the Holy Paraclete
Illustrations copyright 1990 by Pauline Baynes

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in slightly different form in Great Britain by The Random House Group Ltd. in 1990. First published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1992.

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KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The quotations are taken from the second hardback edition of The Lord of the Rings (George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd., 1966) and the fourth hardback edition of The Hobbit (George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd., 1978) and are reproduced by kind permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

CIP data available upon request

ISBN: 978-0-385-75296-1 (eBook)

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The pictures in this book spring from two sources. The large paintings are based on episodes at the end of The Lord of the Rings (the specific volume is referred to by its initials), in which the Ring-bearers ride westwards to the Grey Havens, where they take ship for the Undying Lands. The narrative describes Frodo and Sam riding to meet a company including Bilbo, Elrond, Galadriel and Gildor, as well as many other elves. We may assume that this party had set out from Rivendell: Elrond had told Frodo two years before that he would soon depart. (ROTK, p. 267)

The poem that forms the text of this book is Bilbos. Like Elrond, he had indicated to Frodo that his thoughts were turning towards departure. (ROTK, p. 266)