Beren and Lúthien

By J.R.R. Tolkien

Book Overview

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 L thien 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 L thien 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 L thien: for Beren was a mortal man, but L thien 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 L thien. This is the kernel of the legend; and it leads to the supremely heroic attempt of Beren and L thien 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 L thien 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0063376407
• ISBN13: 9780063376403
• Release Date: February 2024
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

J.R.R. TOLKIEN (1892–1973) brought back to us.

This is a review of the English version. This is excellent work in any language. Any review would take 500 words or more to just explain what the potential reader is going to encounter. J.R.R. TOLKIEN (1892–1973) brought back to us, through the efforts of Christopher Tolkien, who has a track record of doing so for us; this also includes illustrations by Alan Lee. Even if you are a movie buff and have no reading background of Tolkien, this book can stand on its own and is a good place to dive in. The copyright of this book is 2017. This gives you a feel of where to place this book in the pantheon, such as “The Similarion” (1977). There is an extensive preface by Christopher Tolkien that places more emphasis on where this book came from and what it is all about. The preface helps with a great understanding of newbies and even those of us who have read the other writings of J.R.R. TOLKIEN. Christopher Tolkien also reintroduces us to the forewords of previous and parallel writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. Next, the book includes notes on the elder days. This helps set the environment in which we were about to read. Although I like to set my imagination as to what things looked like, the illustrations by Alan Lee help allow all the readers to stay in sync with each other on what the world they are reading about looks like. This particular book has nine different plates in several other sketches to help give a visual to the words we are reading. Passages extracted from “The Lay of Leithan” are displayed in numbered sections. One appendix gives revisions to “The Lay of Leithan.” Because the story is a compendium of several texts to create the individual history of Beren and Lúthien, there is a list of the names in the original texts. At the end of the book is a glossary, which I strongly relied on. The only thing missing that I wish was in the book was the key to pronouncing the words that were in the glossary.