Q: How Long Did it Take to Create Middle-earth?
ANSWER: There is no correct answer to this question for many readers have different points of view on what constitutes Middle-earth and just where it came into existence with respect to Tolkien’s fiction.
As is well-documented J.R.R. Tolkien simply adapted an ancient name for the world, middengeard, to his own use. He himself often said that Middle-earth is simply our own world, “round and inescapable”, “the habitable lands of men”. In this context, Middle-earth has always been and Tolkien did not invent it.
On the other hand, J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories have always followed a specific theme, essentially examining the story of the Fall of Man in a metaphorical lense. That is not to say that Tolkien was writing allegories for the Book of Genesis — rather, he was obsessed with the epic nature of the Fall of Man and its consequences.
In this sense, Tolkien began crafting Middle-earth with his first set of stories, The Book of Lost Tales, which though not set in a world named “Middle-earth” included all the basic themes of fallen races that would be characteristic of Tolkien’s books. Whereas the Fall of Man is attributed to a simple deception by the Devil, he attributed the Fall of Elvenkind to more complicated deception with far-ranging consequences.
However, Middle-earth is really only the stage for the stories that Tolkien wanted to tell. In that sense it was not his first choice of stage. Rather, The Book of Lost Tales is set in a pseudo-historical England, or concerns peoples who once dwelt there. It is a “mythology for England” that is designed to describe events concerning the fairy creatures who preceded the men who settled in England, especially the Anglo-Saxons.
For reasons we’ll never know or understand J.R.R. Tolkien abandoned his “mythology for England” project but he subsequently restructured the entire cycle to simply be an epic fantasy set in an imaginary land, Beleriand. This early Beleriand was not “Middle-earth”, but unlike the landscapes in The Book of Lost Tales the early Beleriand would survive and evolve to become the most ancient western-most region of the “Old World” in Middle-earth.
In a simplistic sense, we can say that Middle-earth first emerged in the early 1930s when Tolkien developed maps that described the world beyond Beleriand. These maps did not include the landscape that was the setting for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so this early Middle-earth only slightly resembled the Middle-earth of the books.
We cannot really say that even the more detailed landscape of The Hobbit — which was published in 1937 — created the Middle-earth we think of today. Like the Beleriandic stories before it, The Hobbit established a large section of landscape that Tolkien would eventually integrate into the realized literary Middle-earth. But that realized literary Middle-earth would not see publication until 1954.
Some people therefore suggest that it took J.R.R. Tolkien about 38 years — from 1916 to 1954 — to “create” the literary Middle-earth that has become the subject of so much widespread discussion and documentation. But then, Tolkien really didn’t stop “creating” Middle-earth there. That is, he continued to niggle — to add more details, to change details, and he constantly tried to improve and expand his vision of Middle-earth right up to the time of his death in 1973.
So some people say that it took nearly all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s life from 1916 to 1973 (a period of 57 years) to “create” Middle-earth. But is that even accurate? For after all, after Tolkien died in 1973 his son Christopher would still publish The Silmarillion (1977) and Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth (1980). These two books added extensive depth and knowledge about Tolkien’s literary Middle-earth to readers’ collective understanding.
But we have also to consider the 12 volumes of The History of Middle-earth, which Christopher published from the years 1983 (The Book of Lost Tales, Part One) to 1996 (The Peoples of Middle-earth) and the 2 volumes of The History of The Hobbit (which John Rateliff published in 2007). Should we not concede that our knowledge and understanding of Tolkien’s literary Middle-earth have been expanded and shaped by these books? If so, then the “creation” of that literary world as we know it today continued until 2007.
And then, of course, there are the occasional disclosures of detail that emerge in various linguistic newsletters, scholarly books (such as Jason Fisher’s book published this year, Tolkien and the Study of His Sources), and original Tolkien letters (such as the Munby letter) — not to mention the odd mention of obscure notes people find in Tolkien’s papers — that add new pieces to the emerging puzzle.
And though it is true that J.R.R. Tolkien himself wrote all these things we continue to discover between the years 1916 and 1973, we ourselves are shaping Middle-earth through the way we deconstruct it, compare it to possible sources, and present its various constituent parts to each other. So in this sense the creation of Middle-earth continues and will most likely continue for a long time to come.
See also
Is Middle-earth A Country or A World?
Is Middle-earth An Island or Continent?
Is Middle-earth Supposed To Be Midgard?
Where On Earth Was Middle-earth?
Where Did J.R.R. Tolkien Find the Name ‘Middle-earth’?
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