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 a number of essays on the Old English poem "The Battle of Maldon". Likewise, Sam's rejection of the Ring is a rejection of power, but can also be seen as a "desire for renown which the defeat over Sauron will bring". Tolkien took the name "Gamgee" from a colloquial word in Birmingham for cotton wool. This was in turn derived from Gamgee Tissue, a surgical dressing invented by a 19th-century Birmingham surgeon named Sampson Gamgee. Tolkien originally used it as a nickname for a man living in Lamorna Cove, England before adapting it into his stories: "There was a curious