[Child of the 7th Age]

I have decided to try and read the corresponding section of HoMe as I review LotR for these discussions. In any case, I was reading Return of the Shadow, the chapter entitled "Of Gollum and the Ring", which was eventually incorporated in Chapter 2, "Shadow of the Past", surely one of the most important sections of the entire book.

The interesting thing is that when JRRT did the earliest draft of "Shadow of the Past", he later called it a "foreward". CT says it is clear his father wrote it as a possible new beginning of the book, in which Gandalf tells Bingo before the Party of the history of the Ring, the danger it posed, and urges Bingo to leave! (At this point in the successive drafts, Bingo was giving the party and Bilbo had already taken off into the wilds.)

Would this foreward have been put forth instead of the current one or, more likely, would it have replaced the prologue we now have? We know this piece was written in about the spring of 1938, prior to any part of the prologue being written (and certainly prior to the composition of the foreward).

In any case, the book would have had a very different tone if it had started off with this dark "foreward" rather than the existing foreward or prologue. I am reminded of what Tokien said later on: how important it is that we know about Rose Cotton and other things back home since we must have some idea of what Frodo and Sam were fighting to defend. Perhaps for the same reason, Tolkien decided to drop the "gloomy" foreward and instead stress the "hominess" of the Shire so we would all understand that the book was not just about fighting evil, but also the preservation of goodness.