The Silmarillion

The forerunner to The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion tells the earlier history of Middle-earth, recounting the events of the First and Second Ages and introducing key characters such as Galadriel, Elrond, Elendil and the Dark Lord, Sauron.

The Silmarillion is an account of the Elder Days, the First Age of Tolkien's world. It is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back, and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part.

The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him to recover the Silmarils, jewels containing the pure light of Valinor.

Included in the book are several shorter works. The Ainulindalë is a myth of the Creation, while the Valaquenta describes the nature and powers of each of the gods. The Akallabêth recounts the downfall of the great island kingdom of Númenor at the end of the Second Age, and Of the Rings of Power tells of the great events at the end of the Third Age, as narrated in The Lord of the Rings.

This pivotal work features the revised, corrected text and includes, by way of an introduction, a fascinating letter written by Tolkien in 1951, in which he gives a full explanation of how he conceived the early Ages of Middle-earth.