Christopher Tolkien

A number-one New York Times bestseller when it was originally published, The Silmarillion is the core of J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative writing, a work whose origins stretch back to a time long before The Hobbit. Tolkien considered The Silmarillion his most important work, and, though it was published last and posthumously, this great collection of tales and legends clearly sets the stage for all his other writing. The story of the creation of the world...

"The final work of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fiction, completing Christopher Tolkien's life-long achievement as the editor and curator of his father's manuscripts"--

Selected letters discuss his books, their meanings, his interests and also reveal his view of the world.

The Book of Lost Tales stands at the beginning of the entire conception of Middle-earth and Valinor. Embedded in English legend and English association, they were set in the narrative frame of a great westward voyage over the ocean by a mariner named Eriol (or AElfwine) to Tol Eressea, the Lonely Isle, where Elves dwelt; from them he learned their true history, the Lost Tales of Elfinesse. In the Tales are found the earliest accounts and original...

This volume in the history of Middle-earth offers prose, poetry, maps, and chronologies and covers the creation myth through Morgoth's fall; includes a description of the events in Beleriand and the first Silmarillion map.