Publishing
In 1937 Tolkien sent the current version of The Lay of Leithian together with a prose version of the yet unfinished part of the poem to his publisher Allen & Unwin who had asked for further material of his fictional world after the success of The Hobbit. As Tolkien did not add any further information on the text the reader who was given it believed the poem to be an attempt to retell the prose version, which he thought to be a Celtic tale. Despite praising the prose he criticized the poem wherefore it was rejected. In 1985 the poem was published posthumously in The Lays of Beleriand, the third volume of The History of Middle-earth. The two versions of the poem are given independently, and the development of them is commented on in detail by Christopher Tolkien.
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Famous quotes containing the word publishing:
“While you continue to grow fatter and richer publishing your nauseating confectionery, I shall become a mole, digging here, rooting there, stirring up the whole rotten mess where life is hard, raw and ugly.”
—Norman Reilly Raine (1895–1971)