But when my father said this he was not - most emphatically not 一referring to the work itself, which was in any case already written, and much of it many times over (the allusions in The Lord of the Rings are not illusory): what was in question for him, as he said earlier in this same letter, was its presentation, in a publication, after the appearance of The Lord of the Rings, when, as he thought, the right time to make it known was already gone.