J. R. R. Tolkien

"The Lord of the Rings is J.R.R. Tolkien's great three-volume epic set in the imaginary world of the Third Age of Middle-earth--a world inhabited by many strange beings, including hobbits, an ancient people smaller than dwarves, cheerful, peace-loving and shy. Since its original publication, this work has caught the imagination of readers of all ages and walks of life. It is an adventure story, an adult fairy tale, a classic myth, which Michael Straight...

Tolkien's version of the great legend of Northern antiquity. In the first part, we follow the adventures of Sigurd, the slayer of Fafnir, and his betrothal to the Valkyrie Brynhild. In the second, the tragedy mounts to its end in the murder of Sigurd at the hands of his blood-brothers, the suicide of Brynhild, and the despair of Gudrún.

"A collection of Tolkien's unpublished manuscripts dealing with events from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Rings." --

A charming new pocket edition of one of Tolkien's major pieces of short fiction, and his only finished work dating from after publication of The Lord of the Rings. What began as a preface to The Golden Key by George MacDonald eventually grew into this charming short story, so named by Tolkien to suggest an early work by P.G. Wodehouse. Composed almost a decade after The Lord of the Rings, and when his lifelong occupation with the 'Silmarillion' was...

"The first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien. Kullervo, son of Kalervo, is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien's characters. "Hapless Kullervo," as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny. Brought up in the homestead of the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father, kidnapped his mother, and tried three times to kill him when he was still...

The third volume that contains the early myths and legends which led to the writing of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic tale of war, The Silmarillion.

This, the third volume of The History of Middle-earth, gives us a privileged insight into the creation of the mythology of Middle-earth, through the alliterative verse tales of two of the most crucial stories in Tolkien's world—those of Turien and Luthien. The first of the poems

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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,...

"Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, well-to-do hobbit, lives comfortably in his hobbit-hole until one day the wandering wizard Gandalf chooses him to take part in an adventure from which he may never return." --

War rages in the west-a titanic battle of will and strategy between the great wizard Gandalf and Sauron, the dark lord. Meanwhile, eastward in Mordor, Frodo and Sam approach the end of their improbable quest, bearing the One Ring ever closer to the Cracks of Doom-and to a final confrontation with the very essence of evil.