Beren and Lúthien

by J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (Editor), Alan Lee (Illustrator)

Overview

The New York Times Bestseller

J.R.R. Tolkien's Beren And Lúthien is one of the three 'Great Tales' of the Elder Days. The epic tale of Beren and Lúthien became an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of Tolkien’s First Age of the World.

Always key to the story is the fate that shadowed their love: Beren was a mortal man, Lúthien an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, imposed on Beren an impossible task before he might wed Lúthien: to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, of a Silmaril.

Painstakingly restored from Tolkien’s manuscripts and presented for the first time as a continuous and standalone story, Beren and Lúthien reunites fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, along with the rich landscape and creatures unique to Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Christopher Tolkien tells the story in his father’s own words by giving its original form as well as prose and verse passages from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed.

“A good introduction to LOTR fans nervous about taking on The Silmarillion, and also gives longtime fans a fascinating look at the Tolkiens’ myth-making process.”—EntertainmentWeekly.com

“With eloquence and diligence and care, the son reconstructs and retraces the father’s journey, pursuing the tale through draft after draft as Tolkien pursued his vision of Middle-earth.”—NPR.org

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328915337
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/06/2018
Series:	Great Tales of Middle-earth Series
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	33,511
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

J.R.R. TOLKIEN (1892–1973) is the creator of Middle-earth and author of such classic and extraordinary works of fiction as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. His books have been translated into more than fifty languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide.

Date of Birth:

January 3, 1892

Date of Death:

September 2, 1973

Place of Birth:

Bloemfontein, Orange Free State (South Africa)

Place of Death:

Oxford, England

Education:

B.A., Exeter College, Oxford University, 1915; M.A., 1919

Editorial Reviews

06/05/2017
Editor Christopher Tolkien successfully aims this latest version of Beren and Lúthien’s tale at two distinct audiences. This hybrid volume serves both as an introduction to a moving love story from the First Age of Middle Earth for fans who are not familiar with The Silmarillion and as a scholarly look at how Christopher’s father altered the tale over the years. Those in the first category should skip the spoiler-filled preface and go straight to the original version, which describes the love of the mortal Beren and the royal elf-maiden Lúthien. Lúthien’s father agrees to their marriage, but only if Beren retrieves a Silmaril jewel from the crown of Melko, the dark god who preceded Sauron as the embodiment of evil in Middle Earth. Despite that familiar fairy-tale setup, Lúthien herself plays an active part in the adventure. The prose isn’t always the elder Tolkien’s most polished, but the story works as a stand-alone tale. Those who have encountered it before will find that Christopher enhances their appreciation of it through his accessible illumination of how it evolved over the years. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Every version of the story in the book is incomplete, but under Christopher Tolkien’s steady editorial hand, the fragments assemble themselves to give us an impression of the whole. What makes this possible is the grace with which he handles his long-accustomed dual role of guide to both story and history. His preface and annotations are openhearted and engaging. He leads the reader pleasantly through the greater landscape of Middle-earth in the First Age, and strikes as clear a path as possible through the wilderness of Tolkien’s lifelong attempts to get the story finished and published. With eloquence and diligence and care, the son reconstructs and retraces the father’s journey, pursuing the tale through draft after draft as Tolkien pursued his vision of Middle-earth; as Beren, lost and hunted, followed the sound of Lùthien’s voice as she sang in the shadowed forest of Doriath.” — NPR.org “A good introduction to LOTR fans nervous about taking on The Silmarillion, and also gives longtime fans a fascinating look at the Tolkiens’ myth-making process.”— EntertainmentWeekly.com “A beautiful book.”— San Antonio Express-News —

From the Publisher

★ 2017-05-27
Frodo-heads rejoice: from the Tolkien factory comes a foundational story a century in the making, one yarn to rule them all. "I cannot think of anything more to say about hobbits," J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in frustration to his publisher. "But I have only too much to say, and much already written, about the world into which the hobbit intruded." The story of Beren, a mortal human, and Lúthien, an immortal elf, resonates throughout the corpus of Tolkien's work; born while Tolkien was shaking off the horrors of combat in World War I, it figures in The Silmarillion, the first of the major posthumous books, and in other of the Middle-earth books, to say nothing of The Lord of the Rings itself, when Aragorn sings of the fraught love between the two legendary figures. As reconstructed here and presented whole, the saga adds back story to much of LOTR: it explains the mistrust of Treebeard and the other forest denizens for the world of men, and it provides a foreshadowing for the whole of the canonical Rings trilogy, since it describes a kind of ur-Saruman who lusts for both power and magical jewels, setting off a chain of events that implicates Orcs, dragons, humans, elves, and all manner of other beings. Some of the tale here is in verse, done in a kind of Tennyson-esque meter: "Then Sauron laughed aloud. ‘Thou base, / thou cringing worm! Stand up, / and hear me! And now drink the cup / that I have sweetly blent for thee!' " Sweetly blent indeed. Other moments are worthy of Mikhail Bulgakov, such as Tolkien's conjuring of giant malevolent cats, their "eyes glowing like green lamps or red or yellow where Tevildo's thanes sat waving and lashing their beautiful tails," and of Tennyson himself, as when Beren tells how for Lúthien's love "he must essay the burning waste, / and doubtless death and torment taste."The story has it all: swords, sorcery, and pure and undying love. (Excellent illustrations, too.) Essential grounding for an epic cycle that shows no signs of ending anytime soon.

Kirkus Reviews