Q: Why Did J.R.R. Tolkien Write So Little about the Second Age?
ANSWER: If you ask most scholars about Tolkien’s Second Age, they’ll usually say that he didn’t write much about it. The Second Age was almost an afterthought. In fact, the Second and Third Ages were both add-on conceptions, only developed and fleshed out in detail after Tolkien agreed to write a sequel to The Hobbit in late 1937. Until that time, neither the Second Age nor the Third Age “existed” within the scope of Tolkien’s fiction.
But J.R.R. Tolkien never fully stopped working on his Second and Third Age legends for the next 35 years.
And in my opinion Tolkien wrote extensively about the Second Age. I’m always surprised when I see people asking why he wrote “so little” about the age. I think that mistaken impression is based upon the brevity of “The Tale of Years” in The Lord of the Rings. Most of Tolkien’s history for the Third Age also comes from “The Tale of Years”, so one might as well ask why Tolkien wrote so little about the Third Age.
We actually know a great deal about the events of the Second Age thanks to The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. There are a few other tidbits about the Second Age scattered through other texts.
Here’s a quick rundown of where you can find information about the Second Age.
1 – The Lord of the Rings
The Appendices were the primary source of information about the Second Age for just over 20 years, from their publication in 1956 to the publication of The Silmarillion in 1977. To put that into perspective, as I write this it has been over 45 years since The Silmarillion was published. The dearth of 2nd Age information ended more than twice as many years ago as it existed.
2 – The Silmarillion
With the release of the long-awaited Silmarillion, Tolkien fans (and scholars) received two important texts that provided much more detail about the 2nd Age: “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age” and “Akallabêth”. We learned many things about Númenor and a few more things about Middle-earth. Still, it’s fair to say that details were a bit skimpy.
3 – The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien’s letters proved to be a treasure trove of details about many things in Middle-earth. Much remained hidden, only to be revealed years later. But a few of the letters provided in-depth discussions about things that happened in the First and Second Ages, including the making of the Rings of Power. And for the first time we learned that Tolkien was on the verge of turning his entire fictional history upside down in the last year of his life, as hints of changes in the history of Galadriel and Celeborn appeared.
The most important letter for Second Age historians is no. 131, the letter to Milton Waldman. But there are additional snippets of information in letters no. 144, 153, 154, 156, 174, 176, 183, 200, and many more.
4 – Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth
This book represents the motherlode of information about the Second Age. Not only did we get the description of Númenor and the story of “Aldarion and Erendis”, we also received “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn” (troublesome as it is) and “The Line of Elros”. These texts, their end notes, and appendices provided 100 pages of in-depth material for us. More importantly, they provided us with additional stories about the Second Age.
5 – The Peoples of Middle-earth
Some of the earlier volumes of The History of Middle-earth contained information about the Second Age, but because these books document the development of Middle-earth prior to its publication, many of the anecdotes and stories are incomplete or supplanted by later texts.
The Peoples of Middle-earth is unique, however, in that it contains much material that was in nearly finished form. The only reason why it wasn’t published in the 1950s was that Tolkien was forced to cut about 100 pages of text from The Lord of the Rings (nearly all of it from the appendices).
Christopher Tolkien also included some texts that provided additional insight into the First and Fourth ages. The Peoples of Middle-earth is thus one of the most useful books for researching the fictional history of Middle-earth, although it does include some early versions of texts and some rejected texts and notions.
Conclusion
If you ignore the primary narrative of The Lord of the Rings itself, we don’t have much information about the Third Age. There are very few stories about the Third Age one could tell in full. Were it not for occasional interviews J.R.R. Tolkien gave in the 1950s and 1960s, we’d probably know less about Queen Beruthiel than we do about the friendship of Narvi and Celebrimbor.
We learn almost as much about the Second Age in Unfinished Tales and The Peoples of Middle-earth as we do about the Third Age. So I think we’ve got quite a bit of information about the Second Age of Middle-earth.
See Also
Where Did the Second Age Númenoreans Live in Eriador?
Why Did the Noldor Only Establish Two Realms in the Second Age?
How Many Realms Did the Sindar Start in the Second Age?
When Was Sauron At His Most Powerful?
How Could the Númenoreans Not Know Who the Nazgûl Were?
Shhh! It’s A Secret Ring! (Classic Essay)
A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Part 1 (Classic Essay)
A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Part 2 (Classic Essay)
A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, Part 3 (Classic Essay)
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I find it very striking that we know almost nothing about the history of Arnor (though we know a little bit about its successor states).
I’ve always wondered why he turned his mind’s eye away from Arnor. But each time a new book came out, I found the mystery persisted.
As time went by, Tolkien seemed to become more interested, indeed invested, in the Elves and the Elder Days than the later ages and the doings of Men. Perhaps it’s as simple as that – he put fleshing out the history of Arnor on the back burner and only occasionally went back to it. There was only one of him and there were only so many hours in the day.
Tolkien probably didn’t write much about the Second Age because he didn’t want to restrict what Amazon was going to be able to do with their new show, The Rings of Power.