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	This article appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page as Today's featured article on October 5, 2006.
Article milestones Date Process Result January 16, 2006 Peer review Reviewed April 17, 2006 Good article nominee Not listed April 29, 2006 Peer review Reviewed June 18, 2006 Featured article candidate Promoted September 29, 2008 Featured article review Demoted December 26, 2009 Peer review Reviewed August 31, 2020 Good article nominee Listed Facts from this article were featured on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on July 29, 2021, July 29, 2022, and July 29, 2023. Current status: Former featured article, current good article

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Inaccurate Reference Attribution

Under the section "Concept and Creation", in the "Writing" subsection, the first paragraph ends with:

As the story progressed, he brought in elements from The Silmarillion mythology.

The reference for the above statement is as follows:

Rérolle, Raphaëlle (5 December 2012). "My Father's 'Eviscerated' Work – Son Of Hobbit Scribe J. R. R. Tolkien Finally Speaks Out". Le Monde/Worldcrunch. Archived from the original on 10 February 2013.

The claim "he brought in elements from The Silmarillion mythology" is not explicitly or even implicitly mentioned in the cited article. The closest related idea from the article is perhaps:

In 1937, as soon as it was published, The Hobbit immediately became a critical and popular success, to the point where its then publisher, Allen and Unwin, demanded a sequel urgently. Tolkien, though, did not wish to continue in the same vein. He had instead almost finished a narrative of the most ancient times of his universe, which he called The Silmarillion. Too difficult, decreed the publisher, who continued to harass him. The writer, a bit half-heartedly, accepted the project of writing a new story. In fact, he was about to set in place the first stone of what would become The Lord of the Rings.

But there is no indication that as the writing of the Lord of the Rings books progressed, the author leveraged more elements from the previously unfinished book. The article states the writer accepted the project of writing a new story, implying that work stopped on the previous project. No connection is stated between the contents of the previously unfinished work and the new project; it is only after stopping the old work and accepting the new project that the writer would "set in place the first stone of what would become The Lord of the Rings.".

I think it would be better to remove that sentence completely. There is a cleaner lead to the next paragraph without it anyway. Johnalexjay (talk) 07:23, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this. The relationship between the two "books" is far more complex than this, as Tolkien had been working on his Legendarium (The Silmarillion writ large but unpublished, in thousands of partial drafts) since at least 1917, and built in many allusions to "Silmarillion" events in earlier ages to provide an impression of depth. Clearly the citation is not ideal to convey this concept. I'll look out something better. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:07, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I've removed the Le Monde ref as unhelpful, and added a citation (already in the article) to Tom Shippey's Road to Middle-earth. He writes that "The Lord of the Rings ... has in abundance ... the old Beowulfian 'impression of depth', created just as in the old epics by songs and digressions like Aragorn's song of Beren and Lúthien, Sam Gamgee's allusions to the Silmaril and the Iron Crown" , Elrond's account of Celebrimbor, and dozens more." In short, "elements from The Silmarillion mythology" which Tolkien "brought in". Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:23, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

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