Tolkien spent a happy childhood in the countryside and his sensibility to the rural landscape can clearly be seen in his writing and his pictures.Īlan Lee is the illustrator of the highly-successful centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings and diamond edition of The Hobbit. After his father's death the family moved to Sarehole, on the south-eastern edge of Birmingham. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on the 3rd January, 1892 at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, but at the age of four he and his brother were taken back to England by their mother. Presented together for the first time, they reveal aspects of the story, both in event and in narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost.

To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, he has told the story in his fathers 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. In this book Christopher Tolkien has attempted to extract the story of Beren and Lthien from the comprehensive work in which it was embedded but that story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history. This is the kernel of the legend and it leads to the supremely heroic attempt of Beren and Lthien together to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril. 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 Lthien. Essential to the story, and never changed, is the fate that shadowed the love of Beren and Lthien: for Beren was a mortal man, but Lthien was an immortal Elf. Returning from France and the battle of the Somme at the end of 1916, he wrote the tale in the following year. The tale of Beren and Lthien 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. Painstakingly restored from 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.

Beren and luthien alan lee