Best Selling Books by Christopher Tolkien

The End of the Third Age is comprised of the first section of the hardcover volume published as Sauron Defeated, the ninth volume of The History of Middle-earth. It completes Christopher Tolkien''s account of the creation of The Lord of the Rings begun in the earlier volumes, The Return of the Shadow, The Treason of Isengard, and The War of the Ring. The End of the Third Age begins with Sam''s rescue of Frodo from the Tower of Kirith Ungol, and giving a very different account of the Scouring of the Shire, this part ends with versions of the hitherto unpublished Epilogue, in which, years after the departure of Bilbo and Frodo from the Grey Havens, Sam attempts to answer his children''s questions. The book is illustrated with changing conceptions of Kirith Ungol and Mount Doom, as well as previously unpublished drawings of Orthanc and Dunharrow.

With Christopher Tolkien as your guide, take a tour through this colourful gallery of enchanting art produced by J.R.R. Tolkien and presented in an elegant new slipcased edition. This collection of pictures, with text by Christopher Tolkien, now reissued after almost 30 years confirms J.R.R. Tolkien''s considerable talent as an artist. It provides fascinating insight into his visual conception of many of the places and events familiar to readers of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Examples of his art range from delicate watercolours depicting Rivendell, the Forest of Lothlorien, Smaug, and Old Man Willow, to drawings and sketches of Moria Gate and Minas Tirith. Together they form a comprehensive collection of Tolkien''s own illustrations for his most popular books. Also included are many of his beautiful designs showing patterns of flowers and trees, friezes, tapestries and heraldic devices associated with the world of Middle-earth. In their variety and scope they provide abundant visual evidence of the richness of his imagination. This enchanting gallery was personally selected by Christopher Tolkien who, through detailed notes on the sources for each picture, provides unique insight into the artistic vision of his father, J.R.R. Tolkien.

Discusses the Battle of Helm''s Deep.

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 and fled from Valinor bearing the stolen Silmarils. In The War of the Jewels, the story returns to Middle-earth and the ruinous conflict of the High Elves and the Men who were their allies with the power of the Dark Lord. With the publication in this book of all of J.R.R. Tolkien''s later narrative writing concerned with the last centuries of the First Age, the long history of The Silmarillion, from its beginnings in The Book of Lost Tales, is completed; the enigmatic state of the work at his death can now be understood. A chief element in The War of the Jewels is a major story of Middle-earth, now published for the first time - a continuation of the great "saga" of Turin Turambar and his sister Nienor, the children of Hurin the Steadfast. This is the tale of the disaster that overtook the forest people of Brethil when Hurin came among them after his release from long years of captivity in Angband, the fortress of Morgoth. The uncompleted text of the Grey Annals, the primary record of the War of the Jewels, is given in full; the geography of Beleriand is studied in detail, with redrawings of the final state of the map; and a long essay on the names and relations of all the peoples of Middle-earth shows more clearly than any writing yet published the close connection between the language and history in Tolkien''s world. The text also provides new information, including some knowledge of the divine powers, the Valar.

A beautifully designed hardcover box set containing four classic myths and legends composed or translated by J.R.R. Tolkien — Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Fall of Arthur, and Beowulf. The fifth set in a series of affordable hardcover box sets celebrating the literary achievement of Christopher Tolkien, featuring double-sided dust jackets. Set 5 contains Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, The Fall of Arthur, and Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl are two poems by an unknown author written in about 1400. Sir Gawain is a romance, a fairy-tale for adults, full of life and colour; Pearl is apparently an elegy on the death of a child but, like Gawain, it is also a sophisticated and moving debate on much less tangible matters. Sir Orfeo is a slighter romance, belonging to an earlier and different tradition. It was a special favourite of Tolkien''s. The three translations are here uniquely accompanied with the complete text of Tolkien''s acclaimed 1953 W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture that he delivered on Sir Gawain. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún tells the epic story of the Norse hero, Sigurd, the dragon-slayer, during a time of gods, betrayal and fierce battles; the revenge of his wife, Gudrún; and the Fall of the Nibelungs. Told in verse composed by J.R.R. Tolkien derived from the ancient poetry of the Poetic Edda and the prose Völsunga Saga, this masterful fusion of myth and poetry is accompanied by notes and commentary by Christopher Tolkien. The Fall of Arthur tells the extraordinary story of the final days of England''s legendary hero, King Arthur. It is the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain, and may well be regarded as his finest and most skilful achievement in the use of the Old English alliterative metre. The long narrative poem is accompanied by significant if tantalising notes, in which can be discerned clear if mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with The Silmarillion. The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was completed in 1926: he returned to it later but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition is twofold, for the translation is here paired with an illuminating written commentary on the poem by the translator himself, prepared for a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s. From these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if Tolkien entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel''s terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot. These are accompanied by Sellic spell, a "marvellous tale" written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folk-tale of Beowulf, in which there was no association with the "historical legends" of the Northern kingdoms. Published together for the first time, these four books—all edited by the author''s son and literary executor—collect a fascinating period of Christopher Tolkien''s forty-year career devoted to presenting his father J.R.R. Tolkien''s scholarly writings on the myths and legends of northern Europe, a unique accomplishment that celebrates the academic brilliance and storytelling genius of one of the twentieth century''s finest literary pioneers.

Painstakingly restored from J.R.R. Tolkien’s manuscripts and presented for the first time as a continuous and standalone story, the epic tale of Beren and Lúthien will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, Dwarves and Orcs and the rich landscape and creatures unique to Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The tale of Beren and Lúthien was, or became, an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of the First Age of the World conceived by J.R.R. Tolkien. Returning from France and the battle of the Somme at the end of 1916, he wrote the tale in the following year. Essential to the story, and never changed, is the fate that shadowed the love of Beren and Lúthien: for 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. This is the kernel of the legend; and it leads to the supremely heroic attempt of Beren and Lúthien together to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril. In this book Christopher Tolkien has attempted to extract the story of Beren and Lúthien from the comprehensive work in which it was embedded; but that story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history. To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, he 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 that illustrate the narrative as it changed. Presented together for the first time, they reveal aspects of the story, both in event and in narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost.

The #1 New York Times Bestseller 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. This mythopoetic masterpiece is a must-read before you watch The Lord of the Rings on Amazon. “Majestic! ... Readers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings will find in The Silmarillion a cosmology to call their own, medieval romances, fierce fairy tales, and fiercer wars that ring with heraldic fury... It overwhelms the reader.”—Time The story of the creation of the world and of the First Age, this is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part. The three Silmarils were jewels created by Fëanor, most gifted of the Elves. Within them was imprisoned the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor before the Trees themselves were destroyed by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. Thereafter, the unsullied Light of Valinor lived on only in the Silmarils, but they were seized by Morgoth and set in his crown, which was guarded in the impenetrable fortress of Angband in the north of Middle-earth. The Silmarillion is the history of the rebellion of Fëanor and his kindred against the gods, their exile from Valinor and return to Middle-earth, and their war, hopeless despite all their heroism, against the great Enemy. “A creation of singular beauty ... magnificent in its best moments.”—The Washington Post “Heart-lifting ... a work of power, eloquence and noble vision... Superb!”—The Wall Street Journal

Foreword, notes, editorial revisions, commentaries, appendix, index, and compilation by Christopher R. Tolkien.

New York Times bestseller “An incomplete but highly compelling retelling . . . An action-packed, doom-haunted saga, full of vivid natural description.”—New York Times Book Review The Fall of Arthur recounts in verse the last campaign of King Arthur, who, even as he stands at the threshold of Mirkwood, is summoned back to Britain by news of the treachery of Mordred. Already weakened in spirit by Guinevere’s infidelity with the now-exiled Lancelot, Arthur must rouse his knights to battle one last time against Mordred’s rebels and foreign mercenaries. Powerful, passionate, and filled with vivid imagery, this unfinished poem reveals Tolkien’s gift for storytelling at its brilliant best. Christopher Tolkien, editor, contributes three illuminating essays that explore the literary world of King Arthur, reveal the deeper meaning of the verses and the painstaking work his father applied to bring the poem to a finished form, and investigate the intriguing links between The Fall of Arthur and Tolkien’s Middle-earth. “Compelling in pace, haunted by loss, it lives up to expectations.”—Daily Beast “Erudite and beautiful.” – NPR.org

In this sixth volume of The History of Middle-earth the story reaches The Lord of the Rings. In The Return of the Shadow (an abandoned title for the first volume) Christopher Tolkien describes, with full citation of the earliest notes, outline plans, and narrative drafts, the intricate evolution of The Fellowship of the Ring and the gradual emergence of the conceptions that transformed what J.R.R. Tolkien for long believed would be a far shorter book, ''a sequel to The Hobbit''. The enlargement of Bilbo''s ''magic ring'' into the supremely potent and dangerous Ruling Ring of the Dark Lord is traced and the precise moment is seen when, in an astonishing and unforeseen leap in the earliest narrative, a Black Rider first rode into the Shire, his significance still unknown. The character of the hobbit called Trotter (afterwards Strider or Aragorn) is developed while his indentity remains an absolute puzzle, and the suspicion only very slowly becomes certainty that he must after all be a Man. The hobbits, Frodo''s companions, undergo intricate permutations of name and personality, and other major figures appear in strange modes: a sinister Treebeard, in league with the Enemy, a ferocious and malevolent Farmer Maggot. The story in this book ends at the point where J.R.R. Tolkien halted in the story for a long time, as the Company of the Ring, still lacking Legolas and Gimli, stood before the tomb of Balin in the Mines of Moria. The Return of the Shadow is illustrated with reproductions of the first maps and notable pages from the earliest manuscripts.

The History of Middle-earth Index presents the comprehensive indices of all twelve History of Middle-earth volumes in a single, easily referenced edition, serving as an essential complement to this extraordinary work.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, PEARL, AND SIR ORFEO THREE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH POEMS, WITH TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY BY J.R.R. 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 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in this book are Sir Orfeo, a medieval version of the story of Orpheus and Euridice, a love so strong that it overcame death, and Pearl, the moving tale of a man in a graveyard mourning his baby daughter, lost like a pearl that slipped through his fingers. Worn out by grief, he falls asleep and dreams of meeting her in a bejewelled fantasy world. Interpreted in a form designed to appeal to the general reader, J.R.R. Tolkien’s vivid translations of these classic poems represent the complete rhyme and alliterative schemes of the originals. This beautifully decorated text includes as a bonus the complete text of Tolkien’s acclaimed lecture on Sir Gawain.