It also includes The Notion Club Papers (a time-travel story related to Númenor), a draft of the Drowning of Anadûnê, and the only extant account of Tolkien's fictional language Adûnaic. The last volume finishes the story and features the rejected Epilogue, in which Sam answers his children's questions. The third volume, The War of the Ring continues to the opening of the Black Gate. The second volume continues to the meeting with Théoden king of Rohan, and includes the invention and evolution of Lothlorien and Galadriel plans for Frodo and Sam's progress to Mordor the invention and evolution of Treebeard, the Ents, and Fangorn discussions of the original map of Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age and of the evolution of Cirth in an appendix. The first volume of The History encompasses three initial stages of composition or, as Christopher Tolkien calls them, 'phases', and finishes with the Fellowship of the Ring entering the Mines of Moria.
Further information: Tolkien's legendarium
