The Notion Club Papers is an abandoned novel byJ. R. R. Tolkien, written in 1945 and published posthumously inSauron Defeated, the 9th volume ofThe History of Middle-earth. It is atime travel story, written whileThe Lord of the Rings was being developed. The Notion Club is a fictionalization of Tolkien's own such club,the Inklings.Tolkien's mechanism for the exploration of time is through lucid dreams. These allow club members to experience events as far back as the destruction of theAtlantis-like island ofNúmenor, as narrated inThe Silmarillion.

The unfinished text ofThe Notion Club Papers runs for some 120 pages inSauron Defeated, accompanied by 40 pages ofChristopher Tolkien's commentary and notes, with examples of the pages hand-written by his father.^[1]

J. R. R. Tolkien was a scholar of English literature, aphilologist and amedievalist interested in language and poetry from theMiddle Ages, especially that ofAnglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe.^[2] His professional knowledge ofBeowulf, telling of a pagan world but with a Christian narrator,^[3]helped to shape his fictional world of Middle-earth. His intention to create what has been called "a mythology for England"^[4] led him to construct not only stories but a fully-formed world,Middle-earth, withinvented languages,peoples, cultures, andhistory. Amonghis many influences were his ownRoman Catholic faith, medieval languages and literature,including Norse mythology.^[2] He is best known as the author of thehigh fantasy worksThe Hobbit (1937),The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), andThe Silmarillion (1977), all set in Middle-earth.^[5]

The story revolves around the meetings of anOxford arts discussion group, the Notion Club. During these meetings, Alwin Arundel Lowdham discusses hislucid dreams aboutNúmenor, alost civilisation connected withAtlantis and with Tolkien'sMiddle-earth. Through these dreams, he "discovers" much about the Númenor story and thelanguages of Middle-earth (notablyQuenya,Sindarin, andAdûnaic). While not finished, at the end of the given story it becomes clear Lowdham himself is a reincarnation of sorts ofElendil, leader of the men who escaped the destruction of Númenor. Other members of the Club mention their vivid dreams of other times and places.

The Notion Club Papers is elaborately constructed. The main story (the Notion Club, itself the frame of the Númenor story) is set within aframe story. Both are set in the future, after the actual time of writing, 1945. Embedded within the story are Tolkien's versions of European legends:King Sheave, andThe Death of St. Brendan, a three-page poem also titled 'Imram'.

In the frame story, a Mr. Howard Green finds documents in sacks ofwaste paper at Oxford in 2012. These documents, the Notion Club Papers of the title, are the incomplete notes of meetings of the Notion Club; these meetings are said to have occurred in the 1980s. The notes, written by one of the participants, include references to events that 'occurred' in the 1970s and 1980s. Green publishes a first edition containing excerpts from the documents. Two scholars read the first edition, ask to examine the documents, and then submit a full report. The "Notes to the Second Edition" mentions the contradictory evidence in dating the documents, and an alternative date is presented: they may have been written in the 1940s.

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote several unfinished drafts ofThe Notion Club Papers in 1945.^[1][6] The 120-page fragment was published posthumously byGeorge Allen & Unwin in the UK and byHoughton Mifflin in the US, withinSauron Defeated, the 9th volume ofThe History of Middle-earth, in 1992. The book includes in addition some 40 pages ofChristopher Tolkien's commentary and notes on the abandoned novel, and reproduces examples of pages hand-written by his father.^[1]

The text comments onC. S. Lewis'sSpace Trilogy. Lewis and Tolkien were close friends and members ofthe Inklings literary club.^[7] The two men had agreed to write space travel (Lewis) and time travel (Tolkien) novels, since they agreed there were too few stories in existence that they really liked.^[8][9] Tolkien's remarks on the trilogy are similar in style to Lewis's commentary on Tolkien's poemThe Lay of Leithian, in which he created a fictional history of scholarship of the poem and even referred to other manuscript traditions to recommend changes to the poem. Tolkien's biographer,Humphrey Carpenter, describesThe Notion Club as a "thinly disguised" version of the Inklings, noting that the time travellers are twoOxford dons who are members of the club.^[10][11]

Jane Stanford linksThe Notion Club Papers toJohn O'Connor Power's 1899The Johnson Club Papers; the two books have a similar title page. The Johnson Club was a "Public House School" and met intaverns as the Inklings did. The purpose was "Fellowship and free Exchange of Mind". Both clubs presented papers "which were read before the members and discussed". The Johnson Club was named forSamuel Johnson, who like Tolkien, had a strong connection toPembroke College, Oxford.Stanley Unwin, Tolkien's publisher, was a nephew of Fisher Unwin, the founding member of The Johnson Club.^[12]

The Notion Club Papers may be seen as an attempt to re-write the incompleteThe Lost Road (written around 1936-1937), being another attempt to tie the Númenórean legend in with a more modern tale throughtime travel. It follows the then-popular theory ofJ. W. Dunne, who had suggested in his 1927An Experiment with Time that dreams could combine memories of both past and future events, and that time could flow differently for observers in different dimensions.^[10][9] The modern name "Alwin", theOld English name "Ælfwine", and theQuenya name "Elendil" all mean "Elf-friend"; inThe Lost Road, the story involves father-son characters named Edwin/Elwin, Eadwine/Aelfwine, Audoin/Alboin, Amandil/Elendil, all meaning "Bliss-friend/Elf-friend", as the pair travel successively further back in time all the way through history to Númenor, just as the protagonists ofThe Notion Club Papers do in their lucid dreams.^[13] This situates Númenor, whose downfall is described inThe Silmarillion, as part of an inventedmythology for England.^[14] Tolkien's biographerJohn Garth adds thatThe Notion Club Papers character Lowdham's middle name, Arundel, is bothan English place-name and an echo of the legendarium'sÉarendel (an ancestor of Elendil^[15]).^[16]

Both stories however break off before much time-travelling takes place.^[10] Tolkien finally managed to incorporateliterary explorations of time inThe Lord of the Rings, in the form of a visit to what seems to be the deep past in theElvish land ofLothlorien, following a tradition that inElfland, time is different; the stay lasts a month, but feels like only a few days.^[18][19] According toChristopher Tolkien, had his father continuedThe Notion Club Papers, he would have linked the real world of Alwin Lowdham with his eponymous ancestorÆlfwine of England, the fictional compiler ofThe Book of Lost Tales, and with Atlantis. One of the members of the Notion Club, Michael George Ramer, combines lucid dreams with time-travel and experiences the tsunami that sank Númenor. He cannot tell if it is history, or fantasy, or something in between.^[20]Verlyn Flieger writes that the journeying about of the protagonist recalls the CelticImram voyages, noting that Tolkien wrote a poem named "Imram" at the same time, and it was the only element published in his lifetime.^[21]

Virginia Luling writes ofThe Notion Club Papers that "Tolkien had reason to abandon it: the existing chapters are unsuccessful, though with gleams."^[13] Flieger comments that had eitherThe Lost Road orThe Notion Club Papers been finished,^[9]

we would have had a dream of time-travel through actual history and recorded myth which would have functioned as both introduction and epilogue to Tolkien's own invented mythology. The result would have been time-travel not on the scale of ordinary science fiction but of epic, a dream of myth and history and fiction interlocking as Tolkien wanted them to, as they might well once have done.^[9]

The Notion Club Papers mentions a great storm in England, on 12 June 1987.^[22] The actualGreat Storm of 1987 occurred in October of that year.^[23]Christopher Tolkien drew attention to this, saying "my father's 'prevision' was only out by four months".^[24]

• Carpenter, Humphrey (1977).J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. New York:Ballantine Books.ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.
• Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (2023) [1981].The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition. New York:HarperCollins.ISBN 978-0-35-865298-4.
• Chance, Jane (2003).Tolkien the Medievalist.Routledge.ISBN 978-0-415-47348-4.OCLC 53706034.
• Fisher, Jason (January 2007)."Sauron Defeated". InDrout, Michael D. C. (ed.).The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia.CRC Press. p. 593.ISBN 978-0-415-96942-0.
• Flieger, Verlyn (2005)."The Otherworld: Drowned Lands".Interrupted Music: The Making Of Tolkien's Mythology.Kent State University Press. pp. 125–136.ISBN 978-0-87338-824-5.
• Flieger, Verlyn (2001)."Where the Dream-fish Go".A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien's Road to Faėriė.Kent State University Press. pp. 117–141.ISBN 978-0-87338-699-9.
• Shippey, Tom (2005) [1982].The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology (Third ed.).HarperCollins.ISBN 978-0-261-10275-0.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1977).Christopher Tolkien (ed.).The Silmarillion. Boston:Houghton Mifflin.ISBN 978-0-395-25730-2.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1992).Christopher Tolkien (ed.).Sauron Defeated. Boston, New York, & London:Houghton Mifflin.ISBN 0-395-60649-7.

• The History of Middle-earth
• Unfinished novels
• Novels about time travel
• Novels published posthumously
• Roman à clef novels

• Good articles
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata