Roverandom was first published in 1998, decades after Tolkien wrote it for his children.
Tolkien wrote Roverandom in 1925 after his son Michael lost a toy dog on a beach at Filey in Yorkshire. The story follows a toy dog named Rover who is transformed by a wizard and has adventures involving the Moon, the sea, and a dragon.
The manuscript remained unpublished during Tolkien’s lifetime. It appeared in book form in 1998, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond. Their edition helped make the work available as an example of Tolkien’s children’s storytelling outside the better-known Middle-earth books.
Roverandom is sometimes grouped with The Hobbit because both are children’s fantasies, but it is not a Middle-earth narrative and does not feature Bilbo, Gandalf, or the Ring. Its origin is unusually well documented because it began with a real lost toy.