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The Silmarillion, 1st Edition

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The Silmarillion is a compilation of Tolkien's mythology of Middle-Earth. Tolkien had worked on this mythology for much of his life, long before he even considered writing the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Many readers get turned off from the Silmarillion because of Tolkien's archaic style and the sheer number of names. My advice is not to worry about all of the names the first time you read through. Just try to remember a few of the main characters. There is a helpful appendix in the back of the book with the names of all of the characters and places. Moreover, Prof. Corey Olsen has a podcast on iTunes that explains the Silmarillion, which is worth listening to if you really want to appreciate the book.

But make no mistake - the effort you put in will pay off. First, it will it enhance your understanding of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy, as the Silmarillion stories form the history for those novels. The Silmarillion goes from the creation of the universe right up to the war of the rings. In the First Age of the world, Men and Elves battle an evil lord that make Sauron look like a clown. Some of the stories, such as the defection of Feanor and the Noldor Elves, are stunning in their emotional power. It's some of the most gripping fantasy fiction ever. My one regret is that Tolkien didn't live long enough to publish this work himself.

This collection of loose knit tales of the history of Middle Earth and those beings that lived there. We learn many previously unknown things as what different names such as the meanings of beings and places. This helps add a dimension to the stories that take place in Middle Earth.

It would help to read Lord of the Rings first as it give us a synopsis of the lay of the land and the beings that live/lived there. Then we can read the Silmarillion to get an in-depth history as to where their history; relationships are better understood.

Much of "The Silmarillion" can be absorbed in small bits. Then we can sit back and contemplate how it could have been.

One does not just cut through any cultural history book for light reading and just shelving it. This is a cultural history book and will require rereading.

When the characters in "The Lord of the Rings" talk about "the war", I can refer to which one they are talking about after reading about that particular war in detail. Or are they just referring to one of the many orc skirmishes.

You do not have to be a Tolkien fan to find interest in this collection.

Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-Earth

What makes Tolkien great is that he understands that modernity is a lie; that there was a better world inside of man long ago, and if there wasn't, well then there should have been.

It is this that gives his books their haunting, mystic quality.

But where Lord of the Rings has a little too much of children's literature in it, this one - despite the presence of "elves" and such - is for grownups alone. Its intellectual level, and the quality and density of the prose, are too high for children. And for dummies, or the spiritually bankrupt. This is Tolkien's best and most elite statement, a true classic of 20th century literature.

I'll pay this book the best compliment I know and say that it is the single best Lord Dunsany imitation I have ever seen, but it is also much more than that. Tolkien's prose soars to the majestic heights that his inventions warrant. Nothing against his other books, but many elements of them are a matter of taste whereas the greatness of the Silmarillion cannot be seriously denied by anyone with a brain or a soul. Not to be missed.

In the Tolkien canon, THE SILMARILLION is the most highly contested of all his works. Constructed as a prehistoric history of the Universe, the book has the cultural significance of the Bible in Tolkien's universe. It is Tolkien's primary work, but it's also his most troublesome, in more ways than one. One thing you need to know. In Tolkien scholarship, there are two primary ways to refer to the "Silmarillion". One is the Silmarillion, the legendarium proper, and then the 1977 SILMARILLION, which may or may not be what Tolkien envisioned.

THE SILMARILLION, the book Tolkien spent all of his adult life writing, was, sadly, incomplete when Tolkien died at the age of eighty one in 1973. Naturally, this begs the question why did it take him decades to write the book, and it still be unfinished after all that time? Well, to understand that, you need to understand two things: the scope of the project, and how Tolkien worked.

The scope of the book was a complete imaginary history, a totally self-contained mythology, all written and developed for his home country, England (my home country as well). Imagine the Greek and Roman mythologies, all those myths and gods, developed by one man. Imagine Homer completely inventing all the gods for his stories. Imagine how hard that would be to come up with your own mythological traditions as such. No wonder Tolkien had such a hard time completing the work.

Now, the scope (which is extremely ambitious for any artist) was compounded by how Tolkien worked. First, he was a philologist first and foremost, and so before the stories he invented languages. All of these languages (which would have taken a life-time to develop on their own) had their own history, and are so interlocked with the mythology that you cannot remove them. He developed the main body of legends around these languages. Many features of the central body of legends changed relatively little over the years, but he wrote different versions of them at different times and in different styles. Some of the legends were set in poetry, those in annalistic histories, others in condensed summaries, and others in the more traditional (at least, for modern readers) novel format. A lot of these writings are also unfinished, due to Tolkien's perfectionist tendencies. Christopher Tolkien said that for most of his father's writing there existed a stable tradition from which Tolkien worked from, but there was no such thing as a stable text for the primary legends.

All this is tied to how Tolkien worked. C. S. Lewis famously stated that you did not influence Tolkien, you may as well as try to influence a bandersnatch. Tolkien would either take no notice of your criticism, or else he would start all over from the beginning. And so he did. A lot. Tolkien would reach a certain portion of the draft, be unsatisfied, and began the whole thing over again, while never reaching the end. Or Tolkien would have two copies of the same manuscript, one to be the fair copy and one to be working copy. Well, Tolkien would make conflicting revisions on both copies at separate times. How do you decide his final intent? Good question. These tendencies presented major problems from Christopher Tolkien when he prepared the 1977 SILMARILLION.

Another problem with Tolkien's work also is that toward the end of his life, he began contemplating changing major features of the mythology that stretched back to the earliest versions. A lot of these changes had to do with cosmology, with the sun and moon, and changing Arda (the earth) from a flat-world to a round world. In the original mythology, and the 1977 version, Arda begins as a flat world but is made into a round world. Tolkien contemplated other major changes that would have totally changed much of the more distinguishable features of the mythology, stable features present from the very beginning. Consult "Myths Transformed" in MORGOTH'S RING, Vol. 10 of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH for more information.

Then we have the problem of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Tolkien was tantalizing close to some sort of final version of the work in the late 1930s (indeed, the 1937 version of the "Quenta Silmarillion" is the only complete version he ever made of the primary work and which is heavily used in the 1977 SILMARILLION). Then, due to publisher demand, Tolkien began working on his masterpiece for the next fourteen years, leaving the "Silmarillion" legendarium completely untouched for over a decade. When Tolkien picked up the Silmarillion again, he now had to account for LOTR and somehow incorporate that major work into the mythology. Tolkien did a lot of work on the legendarium after the completion of LOTR, but this work was plagued with uncertainty and contemplation of radical rewriting.

And in the last years of his life, Tolkien also began moving away from strict narrative and began working extensively on theological matters, essays on Elvish culture and lingustics, and other matters not tied to the actual narrative of the main storyline.

So when Tolkien died in 1973, he left his son Christopher in quite the predicament. Decades of writng, much if it unfinished, with a staggering palimpsest of manuscripts from which to draw from would be daunting to anyone. As literary executor, he had to come up with a publishable version of the work (as clearly that was his father's wishes, and Christopher was the man for the job, being most acquainted with the work). So, in four years, with the assistance of Guy Gavriel Kay, he cobbled together a self-contained narrative, largely compatible with the Hobbit cycle. Due to Tolkien's tendency to not finish drafts, some of the narrative in the last portion of the work had not been touched by Tolkien in literally decades (The Fall of Gondolin never got a complete version other than the 1916 Lost Tales story). Thingol and Melian presented thorny problems, especially the Girdle of Melian (her magical protection around Doriath). Christopher and Kay constructed the chapter dealing with the ruin of Doriath from scratch, with no corresponding writing in Tolkien's own work.

Yet another major issue was, due to getting a version of the book published as soon as possible, Christopher rushed through much of material, and did not have access to all of his father's manuscripts, some of which had been sold off. While he always used post LOTR material as often as possible, Christopher was as many times incorrect as not when guessing his father's intentions for the work. In the ensuing twelve volumes of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH, where he had years to get to know the manuscripts, Christopher examines more closely his father's works, and there is much in those twelve volumes that were Tolkien's final intention for the work, but did not make it into the published version. Christopher has stated, given time, he may have produced a much different version than the one published. But he is now retired and will not revise the book (much of which would have to be wholesale).

That's quite a bit of history, and ultimately all that history may bog potential readers down in their journey into THE SILMARILLION. For all of its imperfections, its unfinished nature, the endless debates on how much the 1977 version is what Tolkien really intended, the book is powerful mythology. The reading is dry, and the names are jawcracking trying to pronounce. While it's hard to keep track of the multitude of characters and all the permutations and migrations of the three main Elven tribes, there are unforgettable images in the book, and beautiful passages of despair and hope.

While the work is not the most accessible for modern readers, for those who persist you can see why Tolkien really did regard this as his life work, or, as Tom Shippey says, "the work of his heart". And what a mighty work it is, despite its unfinished nature.

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Bonus Content:

In November 28, 1999, I released a small review of "The Silmarillion" on Amazon.com (which is still accessible on the main product listing of this book), and as bonus content to the review proper (which is up above), I am including my original review

Tolkien's Bible, November 28, 1999

"Hark now to "The Silmarillion", the Bible of Tolkien's fantasy world. This is not a work to be taken lightly, for here we at last uncover the great truths of Middle-earth, and hear of its creation.

"The Silmarillion", simply put, is a tragic book, beautiful, with one flaw that nearly kills it. It was unfinished. We do not know (or ever will) how much different it would have been if Tolkien live to complete his greatest work. Christopher his son has done as well as can be expected, but there are quite a few style shifts betraying his pen instead of his father's. This is to be read with such seriousness as "The Iliad" or "The Odyssey". It is a mythological work that should be studied. This is not for a conventional reader, this is for the serious student. Without the knowledge his other two novels (for "The Lord of the Rings" is one novel, not a trilogy) "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit", "The Silmarillion" is not near as rewarding as it would otherwise be. "The Hobbit" is for children, "The Lord of the Rings" is for adults, and "The Silmarillion" is for students of this great work. All students interested in literature should read this, flawed as it is because of the mortality of man.

It also shows how strong Tolkien believed in God. His world was very much a Christian world, set up in the likeness of God. God is never mentioned in "The Lord of the Rings", but as I remember he is in "The Silmarillion". You see him with the Ainur create the world. Truly, this is a master of fantasy, and a great Christian man."

This book was in SUCH GOOD SHAPE that my hubby wont read it for fear he will mess it up lol. Everything was PERFECT, all maps and extras were secure and included, cover AND cover protector were PERFECT! Thank you sooooo much!!

... that this book is quite a brilliant book. I am very glad to have purchased the First Edition and would recommend it to just about anyone. Also the seller was very timely and very professional. I am glad to do business with them.