Christopher Tolkien

It's Christmas at Camelot and King Arthur won't begin to feast until he has witnessed a marvel of chivalry. A mysterious knight, green from head to toe, rides in and brings the court's wait to an end with an implausible challenge to the Round Table: he will allow any of the knights to strike him once, with a battle-axe no less, on the condition that he is allowed to return the blow a year hence. Arthur's brave favorite for the challenge is Sir Gawain... Accompanying...

In volumes ten and eleven of The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien recounts from the original texts the evolution of his father's work on The Silmarillion, the legendary history of the Elder Days or First Age, from the completion of the Lord of the Rings in 1949 until J.R.R. Tolkien's death. In volume ten, Morgoth's Ring, the narrative was taken only as far as the natural dividing point in the work, when Morgoth destroyed the Trees of Light...

Evil Morgoth rules over a vast military power from his fortress of Angband. Ulmo, the Lord of Waters, opposes him. Central to this enmity of the gods is the city of Gondolin, built and peopled by Noldorin Elves who rebelled against their rule and fled to Middle-earth. Into this world comes Tuor, cousin of Túrin. Guided unseen by Ulmo, Tuor sets out from the land of his birth on the fearful journey to Gondolin. The original tale -- only seventy-five...

Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal elf. Her father, a great elvish lord, in deep opposition to Beren, imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, [Christopher Tolkien] has told the story in his father's own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts...

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world's greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of the languages and history of Middle-earth as recorded in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, was one of the most prolific letter-writers...

Coming from the darker side of J.R.R. Tolkien's imagination, this is an important non Middle-earth work to set alongside his other retellings of existing myth and legend, "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún," "The Fall of Arthur," and "The Story of Kullervo." "Set 'in Britain's land beyond the seas' during the age of chivalry, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun tells of a childless Breton lord and lady (the 'Aotrou' and 'Itroun' of the title) and the tragedy...

In The War of the Ring Christopher Tolkien takes up the story of the writing of The Lord of the Rings with the Battle of Helm's Deep and the drowning of Isengard by the Ents. This is followed by an account of how Frodo, Sam and Gollum were finally brought to the Pass of Kirith Ungol, at which point J.R.R. Tolkien wrote at the time: 'I have got the hero into such a fix that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty'....

This book was originally published in 1953. In December of that year, J.R.R. Tolkien took possession of a reel-to-reel tape recorder and, sometime during the first few months of 1954, decided to record 'the whole thing on tape' as a way of 'testing' the performative quality of the dramatic dialogue between Tídwald and Torhthelm. For the older Tídwald, Tolkien adopted a slower, deeper voice, perhaps akin to 'the voice of Gandalf' that W.H. Auden...