Roverandom is J.R.R. Tolkien’s dog-inspired story about a toy that came to life.
Tolkien created Roverandom after his young son Michael lost a favourite toy dog during a seaside holiday in 1925. To comfort him, Tolkien invented a tale about a real dog named Rover who is transformed into a toy and undergoes adventures involving wizards, the Moon and the sea.
The story remained unpublished during Tolkien’s lifetime. It was edited and published posthumously by Christopher Tolkien in 1998. Roverandom is an early example of Tolkien’s ability to turn a family event into an elaborate fantasy narrative, but it is not part of the main Middle-earth sequence. Readers sometimes confuse it with Tolkien’s other shorter works, such as Leaf by Niggle or Farmer Giles of Ham, which have different origins, settings and characters.