The Adventures of Tom Bombadil actual translation from the "Red Book of Westmarch", and contains some background information on the world of Middle-earth that is not found elsewhere: e.g. the name of the tower at Dol Amroth and the names of the Seven Rivers of Gondor. There is also some fictional background information of those poems, linking them to Hobbit folklore and literature and to their actual writers (some of them are ascribed to Samwise Gamgee). The book uses the letter "K" instead of "C" for the /k/ sound in Sindarin (one of the languages invented by Tolkien), a spelling variant Tolkien used many times
Samwise Gamgee local character, an old man who used to go about swapping gossip and weather-wisdom and such like. To amuse my children I named him Gaffer Gamgee... The choice of Gamgee was primarily directed by alliteration; but I did not invent it. It was caught out of childhood memory, as a comic word or name. It was in fact the name when I was small (in Birmingham) for 'cotton-wool'. (Hence the association of the Gamgees with the Cottons.) I knew nothing of its origin." Tolkien claimed to be genuinely surprised when, in March 1956, he received a letter from one Sam