Gallery: See the Sketches J.R.R. Tolkien Used to Build Middle-Earth
Courtesy of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford01Art of The Lord of the Rings final revised.indd
"Map of Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor" Tolkien used maps such as this one to compute the exact locations of Frodo and Sam as they walked across Emyn Muil and the Dead Marshes and arrived at Mount Doom, so their arrival coincided with the parallel plotlines of other members of the Fellowship.
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"Plan of Shelob’s lair" Dungeons & Dragons players might have been inspired by this map of Shelob the spider's den had they known of this drawing's existence. If only D&D had been invented in 1954, when *The Lord of the Rings* was published, not 1974.
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"Distances and dates in Mordor" Our quest is how long? In this complicated sketch-map, Tolkien worked out distances between various stops along the quest, such as the fact that it was 20 miles from Osgiliath and the Cross-roads of Minas Morgul, just to the west of Mordor.
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"The 'First Map' of Middle-earth" This was Tolkien’s master reference map. His son Christopher Tolkien called it "strange, battered, fascinating, extremely complicated." Its layers of sheets and corrections "reacted," he said, to the story in progress.
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"Earliest map of the Shire" This map reveals Tolkien's creative process.The blue and red dashed lines show Frodo, Sam, and Pippin’s route. Faint pencil marks update place-name changes, and reveal other notes about his Middle-earth still under development.
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“Helm’s Deep & the Hornburg" Tolkien doodled on almost anything he could get his hands on. Here, he drew this view of Helm's Deep, the fortress retreat of the Rohirrim people, on a half-used page of an Oxford examination booklet.
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“Moria West Gate" This colored pencil drawing of the Doors of Durin, the secret entrance to the mines of Moria with its famous "Speak, friend, and enter" riddle, captures the scale and majesty of the location.The tiny tentacle of the Watcher in the Water, poking out of the water, hints at the Fellowship's trouble ahead.
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“Orthanc (2), 3, (4)" Tolkien used his illustrations to test ideas for how Middle-earth's various buildings, places and geological and man-made (and dwarf-, elf-, and hobbit-made) features might appear, and guided how he might describe them in words. Here's an early, three-part sketch of Saruman’s tower Orthanc, at Isengard.
