AN ADDITIONAL EPILOGUE TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS? (POSSIBLE SPOILER).

AN ADDITIONAL EPILOGUE TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS? (POSSIBLE SPOILER). According to Jon Barnes in the review I posted about yesterday, Tolkien intended a further epilogue, set 16 years after the end of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The epilogue would have shown Sam and Rose Gamgee telling their children stories by the fireside. The other Inklings (the group of Oxford writers which included C. S. Lewis and Tolkien) persuaded Tolkien that the additional epilogue would be too sentimental. The similarity to the quiet epilogue to Harry Potter, set 19 years later, is striking. I imagine Dick Weisfelder and I would probably have voted against the Inklings and for including the epilogue.