The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (poem)
"The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" is the first poem in the eponymous collection of verses The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. This poem and the second one, "Bombadil Goes Boating", are the only two of the sixteen poems in the collection that refer to the character Tom Bombadil.
In the preface to the collection it is stated that these two poems must have from Buckland since they show more knowledge of that country than any Hobbits west of the Marish were likely to possess. This first poem is the earliest work in the collection and combined various hobbit-versions of legends about Bombadil.
The poem itself has twenty-six stanzas of varying sizes composed of rhymed couplets.
History
"The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" was first published in the Oxford Magazine in 1934.[1] J.R.R. Tolkien told Peter Hastings that Tom Bombadil had been put into The Lord of the Rings because he had already "invented" him in this poem and wanted an "adventure" along the way. [2] Later, when the collection of poems were being readied for publication, Tolkien revised his poems to better assimilate them to The Lord of the Rings since they were supposedly written by the hobbits. In this particular poem there was a peacock's feather in Tom's hat (in line four); Tolkien changed it to a swan-wing feather (this alteration was noticed by Pauline Baynes as she was working on illustrations for the book and Tolkien apologized for her being bothered by this detail). [3]
References
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 19, (dated 16 December 1937), Note 1.
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 153, (dated September 1954)
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter, Christopher Tolkien (eds.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 240, (dated 1 August 1962)
