160 From a letter to Rayner Unwin

[Tolkien had handed over some of the material for the Appendices to Volume III of The Lord of the Rings, and Allen & Unwin were pressing him for the remainder. On 2 March, Rayner Unwin wrote to plead for it to be delivered, saying that otherwise the publishers would have to 'yield to the intense pressure that is accumulating and publish [the third volume] without all the additional material'.]

6 March 1955

I must accept your challenge. We must make do with what material I can produce by your return. I hope the Map, which is really the most necessary, will be included.

I now wish that no appendices had been promised! For I think their appearance in truncated and compressed form will satisfy nobody: certainly not me; clearly from the (appalling mass of) letters I receive not those people who like that kind of thing – astonishingly many; while those who enjoy the book as an 'heroic romance' only, and find 'unexplained vistas' part of the literary effect, will neglect the appendices, very properly.

I am not now at all sure that the tendency to treat the whole thing as a kind of vast game is really good – cert. not for me, who find that kind of thing only too fatally attractive. It is, I suppose, a tribute to the curious effect that story has, when based on very elaborate and detailed workings of geography, chronology, and language, that so many should clamour for sheer 'information', or 'lore'. But the demands such people make would again require a book, at least the size of Vol. I.

In any case the 'background' matter is very intricate, useless unless exact, and compression within the limits available leaves it unsatisfactory. It needs great concentration (and leisure), and being completely interlocked cannot be dealt with piecemeal. I have found that out, since I let part of it go.