Pipes and Pipe-Weed in the Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is J. R. R. Tolkien's novel, published in three volumes in 1954–1955, and one of the rare literary texts to establish pipe smoking not merely as a character habit but as the cultural signature of an entire fictional people. The section at the front of the book titled "Concerning Pipe-weed" sets tobacco not into the story's décor but into its history.

Pipe-Weed in the Fiction

Tolkien calls the plant the hobbits smoke "pipe-weed" and notes in the preface that it is most likely a species of the genus Nicotiana — that is, he is openly describing tobacco to the reader. According to the narrative, the first to grow the plant in Shire gardens was Tobold Hornblower of Longbottom in the Southfarthing; the preface places this event, within the fiction's own chronology, around Shire year 1070. Alongside the region's namesake Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby and Southern Star are the main varieties mentioned in the text.

The source for these details is itself defined within the fiction: the treatise supposedly written after the War of the Ring by Meriadoc Brandybuck, called Herblore of the Shire. The preface quotes from that text's introduction. The narrative also shows that tobacco was not merely an object of pleasure; the trade in Southfarthing leaf is directly linked, toward the end of the book, to the hardship the Shire suffers.

Pipe smoking also becomes a measure of intimacy between characters. That the wizard Gandalf picked up the habit from hobbits, and is remembered for his skillful smoke rings, appears both in the preface and within the narrative itself. Many of the scenes that set the book's mood are built around a pipe lit at a doorway or by the hearth.