Best Selling Books by J.r.r. Tolkien

This collection will entertain all who appreciate the art of masterful letter writing. The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien sheds much light on J.R.R. Tolkien''s creative genius and grand design for the creation of a whole new world: Middle-earth. Featuring a radically expanded index, this volume contains 354 letters, dating between October 1914, when Tolkien was an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, and August 29, 1973, four days before his death. This is a valuable research tool for all fans wishing to trace the evolution of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

An absorbing collection of stories, poems, and commentaries by the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Renowned around the world as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien was also a distinguished academic and professor whose writings and lectures expand beyond the scope of his beloved Middle-earth. From short stories of fantastical adventures to essays on imagination and the narrative form, The Tolkien Reader gathers some of these fascinating and hard-to-find works into one volume. Tree and Leaf: Professor Tolkien’s now-famous essay “On Fairy-stories” and the short story “Leaf by Niggle” examine and illustrate the form and treatment of fantasy narratives. The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son: A short play inspired by The Battle of Malden, an Old English poem with no ending and no beginning that describes a historical tenth-century battle between the English and Viking invaders. Farmer Giles of Ham: An imaginative history of the distant past that follows the unheroic Farmer Giles as he attempts to capture a somewhat untrustworthy dragon. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil: A delightful collection of verse in praise of Tom Bombadil, staunch friend of the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings.

Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for J.R.R. Tolkien’s children. Inside would be a letter in a strange, spidery handwriting and a beautiful colored drawing or painting. The letters were from Father Christmas. They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how the reindeer got loose and scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone North Polar Bear climbed the North Pole and fell through the roof of Father Christmas’s house into the dining room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces and made the Man in it fall into the back garden; how there were wars with the troublesome horde of goblins who lived in the caves beneath the house, and many more. No reader, young or old, can fail to be charmed by Tolkien’s inventiveness in this classic holiday treat.

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 glorious history of how Middle-earth would change—and become the world readers recognize in The Lord of the Rings As friends and fellow members of the literary circle known as The Inklings, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis embarked on a challenge. Lewis was to write on “space-travel” and Tolkien on “time-travel.” Lewis’s novel Out of the Silent Planet became the first book of a science fiction trilogy. Tolkien’s unfinished story “The Lost Road” chronicles the original destruction of Númenor, a pivotal event of the Second Age of Middle-earth. In this intriguing volume, Christopher Tolkien traces the vivid history of Middle-earth, bringing the land—its topography and ever-clashing forces—to the state readers recognize from The Lord of the Rings. Entertaining and informative, The Lost Road and Other Writings shares fresh insights into the evolution of one of the world’s most enduring fantasies.

The second part of The History of The Lord of the Rings, an enthralling account of the writing of the Book of the Century which contains many additional scenes and includes the unpublished Epilogue in its entirety. The Treason of Isengard continues the account of the creation of The Lord of the Rings started in the earlier volume, The Return of the Shadow. It races the great expansion of the tale into new lands and peoples south and east of the Misty Mountains: the emerence of Lothlorien, of Ents, of the Riders of Rohan, and of Saruman the White in the fortress of Isengard. In brief outlines and pencilled drafts dashed down on scraps of paper are seen the first entry of Galadriel, the earliest ideas of the history of Gondor, and the original meeting of Aragorn and Eowyn, its significance destined to be wholly transformed. The book also contains a full account of the original map which was to be the basis of the emerging geography of Middle-earth.

The third part of The History of The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien''s The War Of The Ring is an enthralling account of the writing of the Book of the Century, which contains many additional scenes and includes the unpublished Epilogue in its entirety. The War of the Ring takes up the story of The Lord of the Rings with the Battle of Helm’s Deep and the drowning of Isengard by the Ents, continues with the journey of Frodo, Sam and Gollum to the Pass of Cirith Ungol, describes the war in Gondor, and ends with the parley between Gandalf and the ambassador of the Dark Lord before the Black Gate of Mordor. The book is illustrated with plans and drawings of the changing conceptions of Orthanc, Dunharrow, Minas Tirith and the tunnels of Shelob’s Lair.