The Tolkien archive of J.R.R. Tolkien's Hollywood agent H.N. Swanson, providing the full picture of the earliest days of adapting Middle-earth for the screen. Swanson was a pioneering agent, making representations on Tolkien's behalf in Hollywood as early as the 1950s. The first item in the archive is a synopsis of The Lord Of The Rings written by Tolkien and submitted to the Walt Disney Corporation in 1959, before being returned to Swanson. Written just four years after the final volume of The Lord Of The Rings was published, this unrecorded document shows how Tolkien wanted his work presented to the world. In the early 1960s, Swanson sold the film rights for The Hobbit to William Snyder of Rembrandt Films, resulting in the first ever screen adaptation of Tolkien's work, Gene Deitch's 1967 film of The Hobbit.