"Children of Húrin" has been published...

[vison]

I have read the Sil about a dozen times and there are certain passages that move me deeply. JRRT was a wonderful writer.

But his masterwork was LOTR. It is nearly perfect: I say nearly but I mean, it is perfect only they say nothing is.

I find I am not tempted to read more, and particularly if he didn't write it himself. I don't blame CT, if I was in his shoes, I might do the same. He's not doing anything wrong, after all.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I have read the Sil about a dozen times and there are certain passages that move me deeply. JRRT was a wonderful writer.

But his masterwork was LOTR. It is nearly perfect: I say nearly but I mean, it is perfect only they say nothing is.

Nah, LOTR was just a diversion from his real masterwork. Unfortunately, he never finished it, and whatever CT has given us/will give us isn't it.

[Alatar]

You can pre-order on Amazon.co.uk anyway.

[Pearly Di]

If I didn't know CT's attitude toward the films, I would at once assume that he was trying to publish another filmable property, one for which he actually owned the rights.

The thought tickled me.

(I am irritated by CT's attitude toward the films, when he himself has been milking his father's legacy for everything it's worth, but that perhaps is for another thread. )

For me the litmus test in this is: Does this new publicaion dialogue? (I love Sil but oh lord, does that book ever need dialogue.) Is it exciting? Is it of the same quality as most of the stories contained in the fabulous Unfinished Tales?

If so ... I would be interested in checking it out.

If not ... if this new book is all just like another volume of The History of Middle-earth (most of which I find completely unreadable and indigestible), then no thanks, I'll pass. (The Túrin saga is depressing anyway.)

Vison ... I agree, from a purely artistic POV, that LOTR is JRRT's masterwork (even if he didn't intend it to be ). LOTR succeeds completely as a standalone masterpiece of imaginative literature, which is all one requires for a masterwork. I loved LOTR with an abiding passion for many years and had no desire to read Silmarillion until I discovered Tolkien fandom in the run-up to the films. The passion of many of my fellow fans for all things Sil inspired me to read it, and I am very glad I did. Sil contains passages of outstanding beauty and majesty, and it gives a fantastic overview of Tolkien's great mythology. But it is not, in my opinion, as artistically successful as LOTR is. LOTR is accessible as a work of art in a way that Silmarillion is not.

btw, Vison, I don't agree that LOTR is perfect. I think it's brilliant ... but it's not perfect. There are a few things in it I wish Tolkien had done differently. That in itself is a measure of how very dotty I am about the book.

There's something about Middle-earth that always makes you hunger to know more about it. But even after volumes and volumes of HoME, that hunger remains, at some level, unsatisfied. Reading Tolkien always leaves one yearning for distant shores, vast horizons, unexplained vistas ... that far green country, as it were.

PS. Now, if only CT would unearth that long-lost novel about the rise and fall of Númenor. Le sigh!

[Alatar]

Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's manuscripts and presented for the first time as a fully continuous and standalone story

Certainly sounds like a proper narrative, as opposed to HOME XIII. Here's hoping anyway.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's manuscripts and presented for the first time as a fully continuous and standalone story

Certainly sounds like a proper narrative, as opposed to HOME XIII. Here's hoping anyway.

I just really question how different it can be from what he already presented in Unfinished Tales, with the portion that was included only in the Sil added in (and perhaps The Wanderings of Húrin, although the more I think of it, the less I think that that would belong in a book entitled "The Children of Húrin".). I would not be suprised if the book is filled out with HOME-like analysis of all the different various versions.

But as I said in my thread about the creation of the published Sil, the story is so powerful that even if it doesn't really present anything substantially new, it probably is worth doing this just to get it out to as many people as possible (while the demand is still fairly high after the films).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here's a detail that I just noticed on the Amazon.co.uk pre-order page that I hadn't seen mentioned before:

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

New paintings by Mr. Lee could be quite interesting.

Edit: Here's a longer press release that I found:

Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006
J.R.R. TOLKIEN'S THE CHILDREN OF Húrin TO BE PUBLISHED IN 2007

Houghton Mifflin has acquired US rights to publish the first complete book by J.R.R. Tolkien since the posthumous Silmarillion in 1977. HarperCollins UK acquired the project from The Tolkien Estate in a world rights deal. Presented for the first time as a fully continuous and standalone story, the epic tale of The Children of Húrin will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, dragons and Dwarves, and the rich landscape and characters unique to Tolkien.

The Children of Húrin, begun in 1918, was one of three "Great Tales" J.R.R. Tolkien worked on throughout his life, though he never realized his ambition to see it published. Though familiar to many fans from extracts and references within other Tolkien books, it has long been assumed that the story would forever remain an "unfinished
tale". Now reconstructed by Christopher Tolkien, painstakingly editing together the complete work from his father's many drafts, this book is the culmination of a tireless thirty-year endeavor by him to bring J.R.R. Tolkien's vast body of unpublished work to a wide
audience.

Christopher Tolkien said: "It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the Children of Húrin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be
done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it."

Having drawn the distinctive maps for the original The Lord of the Rings more than 50 years ago, Christopher has also created a detailed new map for this book. In addition, it will include a jacket and color paintings by Alan Lee, illustrator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Centenary Edition and Oscar-winning designer of the
film trilogy.

The Lord of the Rings was already acclaimed worldwide as the most popular book of the 20th Century before the blockbuster films in 2001-3 broke new ground and inspired millions more to read J.R.R. Tolkien's books -- an additional 50 million copies were sold, leaving
new fans wanting more. The Children of Húrin will be published by HarperCollins UK in April 2007, and on the same day in the United States by Houghton Mifflin.

Victoria Barnsley, CEO and Publisher of HarperCollins Publishers UK said: "This epic story of adventure, tragedy, fellowship and heroism stands as one of the finest expressions of J.R.R. Tolkien's skills as a storyteller. With a narrative as dramatic and powerful as anything
contained within The Lord of the Rings, it can now be read and enjoyed as Tolkien originally intended, and will doubtless be a revelation for millions of fans around the world."

Janet Silver, Vice President and Publisher of Houghton Mifflin, said, "As J.R.R. Tolkien's original American publisher, dating back to The Hobbit, we are extremely proud to be bringing this project to Tolkien's devoted readership in the United States. Christopher Tolkien has done a great service in realizing his father's vision for The Children of Húrin."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here's what the Tolkien Estate itself has to say about it:

The Children of Húrin
by
J.R.R. Tolkien


JRR Tolkien started imagining the world and mythology of Middle-earth as early as 1916, and never ceased working on the stories and legends pertaining to this world until his death in 1973. Out of this gigantic and constantly revised legendarium one tale in particular was published, like a window onto a moving landscape, « The Lord of the Rings ».

The author wished for his third son, Christopher Tolkien, to become his literary executor after his death, and Christopher's first task was to organize the huge volume of papers that JRR Tolkien had created during his lifetime ; the first published work on the subject to appear was « The Silmarillion » in 1977. This work is an outline of the story and mythology of Middle-earth in condensed form and, as such, gave tantalizing but very brief accounts of the creation of Middle-earth, the birth of Elves and of Men, and many individual tales of which not least was that of the Children of Húrin and the tragic life of Túrin Turambar.

Christopher Tolkien then pursued his study of his father's papers and developed in detail the history of the author's writings and the evolution of the mythical and legendary conceptions in the course of his lifetime, in « Unfinished Tales » (1980), and the twelve-volume « History of Middle-earth » (1983-1996). These works contain many unpublished writings by J.R.R. Tolkien, but almost always as fragmented or incomplete versions.

Three « Great Tales » were to be of most considerable importance to J.R.R. Tolkien in his creation of Middle-earth : Beren & Lúthien, The Fall of Gondolin, and The Children of Húrin. As was to be expected, these tales exist in many unfinished and heavily reworked forms. As a culmination of thirty years' work on his father's papers, and having already published such fragmentary and condensed forms of the tale of Túrin as part of the development of « The History of Middle-earth », Christopher Tolkien has now succeeded in assembling the multiple variants, unfinished pieces, and outlines of the tale to produce a standalone and complete version, entirely in the author's original words. The work therefore is accessible both as a new and complete version of the text for the Tolkien scholar, and as an entirely new tale from Middle-earth for the Tolkien reader who is not familiar with the great tales and mythology that are the roots of « The Lord of the Rings ».

« The Children of Húrin » takes the reader back to a time long before «The Lord of the Rings», in an area of Middle-earth that was to be drowned before ever Hobbits appeared, and when the great enemy was still the fallen Vala, Morgoth, and Sauron only his lieutenant. This heroic romance is the tale of the Man, Húrin, who dared to defy Morgoth's force of evil, and his family's tragic destiny, as it follows his son Túrin Turambar's travails through the lost world of Beleriand.

The book will be published in April 2007, in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand by HarperCollinsUK, and in the United States, by Houghton Mifflin. It will be illustrated with colour plates by the renowned artist Alan Lee, and contain a map drawn by Christopher Tolkien of Beleriand, as well as editorial notes on the text in Appendices.

The rights in « The Children of Húrin » are owned by the Tolkien family via the Tolkien Estate, and the book rights have been sold in a worldwide deal to the Tolkien publishers HarperCollinsUK. There are no plans for the foreseeable future to license any other rights in the work (whether film or otherwise).

[Primula Baggins]

"a map drawn by Christopher Tolkien of Beleriand"

He's really moved in, hasn't he?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here's an article from Times Europe that Unwin posted at TORC:

Fans celebrate as J.R.R. Tolkien's son prepares to release a new chapter in Middle-earth mythology
BY KAREN LEIGH


The elves have returned. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and its prequel, The Hobbit, are some of the best-selling and best-loved novels of all time. But the relatively small body of work published during Tolkien's lifetime describing his remarkably rich and cohesive Middle-earth world of men, dwarves, elves and orcs has left fans rabid for any scraps of the voluminous unpublished writings the master of myth and fantasy left behind.

So hobbitheads worldwide broke out flagons of mead in celebration after Houghton Mifflin's announcement that, next spring, it plans to publish Children of Húrin, a tale that Tolkien tinkered with throughout his lifetime but never finished. The story follows two human siblings and their attempt to evade their tragic fate by overcoming a heavenly curse. Abandoned and resumed several times by Tolkien, some parts of the story were written in alliterative long-line poetry (a form in which he became interested in the 1920s), others were buried within larger compilations of fragmented stories, journals and miscellaneous other jottings.

Over the past 30 years, several volumes of Húrin segments have been published, but to read through them was an ordeal that rivaled the heroes' own epic quest. "There were all these pieces and different versions of the story that didn't agree with each other," says Michael Drout, Prentice associate professor of English at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts.

This version, however, is a definitive, coherent text. Credited as the book's editor, the force behind the volume is Tolkien's son Christopher, who spent the last 30 years collecting and synthesizing the fragments and binding them into a seamless narrative, one that will make Húrin accessible both to casual readers and to those who speak Elvish in their sleep. Christopher Tolkien has long been a caretaker and editor of his father's work. Exceedingly close to his father growing up, he became the keeper of all things hobbit upon J.R.R.'s death in 1973.

This is not the first J.R.R. Tolkien book that Christopher has had a hand in. In 1977, he published The Silmarillion, an esoteric compendium of his father's stories that continues the Middle-earth mythology and is a required text for Tolkien scholars and enthusiasts. A quiet, private man, Christopher is now 81 and lives in France, where he has sought to evade obsessive fans and media pressure. There, he has had ample time to work on Húrin, which is something of a prequel to the classic Tolkien tales.

"It's the first complete tale from the early mythology," says T.A. Shippey, humanities professor at St. Louis University in Missouri. Its antihero is a dark lord and ancestor of Sauron, the evil figure who torments Frodo and Gandalf aeons later. It also focuses on the interaction between humans and elves, a theme which returns in the hobbit books. And at least one Rings denizen — the elf Galadriel — makes a cameo. Some English professors have been frustrated by Tolkien's reputation as a weaver of children's stories, and they hope the new book will bolster their belief that Tolkien is a literary heavyweight worthy of serious academic study. "The perception is that he was just an eccentric don who wrote fantasy," says Alfred K. Siewers, assistant professor of medieval literature at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

But Tolkien was a linguist and a historian who derived much inspiration for his novels from medieval sagas. "Húrin is a very serious book," says Wheaton College's Drout. "It doesn't have any of that lighthearted patter between the hobbits. It's going to show this man was a much more nuanced and complex and deep-thinking writer than he's been given credit for."

And fans who think Tolkien was not just a great storyteller but also a great stylist are similarly excited about Húrin. They expect it to be the best example of his mature, fluid prose since The Lord of the Rings. "He wrote [parts of Húrin] after finishing Rings and by that time he had developed a full narrative style," says Carl F. Hostetter, co-editor of Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on the History of Middle-earth. Which is fitting. One of Tolkien's most famous characters, Bilbo Baggins, did some of his best writing in his later years, too.


©TIME. Printed on Monday, September 25, 2006

[Primula Baggins]

So hobbitheads worldwide broke out flagons of mead in celebration

It's probably churlish of me, but I do get tired of all of us being considered geeks because we happen to believe that Tolkien's work is actually worth the time of an educated adult, or even <gasp> good.

[Frelga]

"Húrin is a very serious book," says Wheaton College's Drout. "It doesn't have any of that lighthearted patter between the hobbits. It's going to show this man was a much more nuanced and complex and deep-thinking writer than he's been given credit for."

I happen to love the lighthearted patter between the hobbits. Must a great work of literature be grim and dreary to be considered comples and deep?

[axordil]

Must a great work of literature be grim and dreary to be considered complex and deep?

No, but it helps.

[Primula Baggins]

That "light-hearted patter" can be heartbreaking when it's Pippin or Merry facing battle for the first time, or Sam trying to hearten Frodo in the dark of Mordor.

[Frelga]

Yes, or Aragorn, punch-drunk after the battle, ribbing the recovering Merry. Or Frodo inquiring after the inns on the roads when Sam rescues him from the Orcs. Talk about nuances, complexity and deep thinking!

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

"a map drawn by Christopher Tolkien of Beleriand"

He's really moved in, hasn't he?

I guess I'm one of the few defenders of Christopher Tolkien. :|

Anyway, IIRC it was Christopher's map of Middle-earth that Ronald (J.R.R.) referred to when he was writing LOTR. I am correct in this, aren't I, Voronwë?

[Primula Baggins]

That wasn't a slam at CT, that was a slam at the person who wrote that press release.

"A map of Beleriand drawn by Christopher Tolkien" would have been more clear and less risible.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

That wasn't a slam at CT, that was a slam at the person who wrote that press release.

So you were being facetious?

I usually don't get too worked up over reviews like this. I expect the folks writing these things to be ignoramuses. I'm rarely disappointed.

"A map of Beleriand drawn by Christopher Tolkien" would have been more clear and less risible.

Main Entry: ris•i•ble
Pronunciation: 'ri-z&-b&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin risibilis, from Latin risus, past participle of ridEre to laugh
1 a : capable of laughing b : disposed to laugh
2 : arousing or provoking laughter; especially : LAUGHABLE
3 : associated with, relating to, or used in laughter <risible muscles>
- ris•i•bly /-blE/ adverb

I'm not really sure I know what you mean by that, but at least I now know what risible means.

But Tolkien was a linguist and a historian who derived much inspiration for his novels from medieval sagas. "Húrin is a very serious book," says Wheaton College's Drout. "It doesn't have any of that lighthearted patter between the hobbits. It's going to show this man was a much more nuanced and complex and deep-thinking writer than he's been given credit for."

I happen to love the lighthearted patter between the hobbits. Must a great work of literature be grim and dreary to be considered comples and deep?

Of course we like the patter of hobbits. The hobbits act as a sort of intermediary between our modern world and the archaic world of Middle-earth. (Besides, they're funny! ) The lack of hobbits in The Silmarillion is probably one of the reasons that it wasn't published during Tolkien's lifetime

Another thing that The Silmarillion lacks, as compared to LOTR, is the perception of depth. The Hobbit and LOTR made references to Gondolin, Lúthien, Elbereth, Gil-galad, Elendil, and Isildur. The Silmarillion didn't have anything preceding it, so that illusion of depth could not be created.

Those of us who love Tolkien's works, and have read books by Carpenter and Shippey about Tolkien, know that he was a brilliant linguist and a medieval scholar. Folks who view him as a writer of children's books don't know him, and their opinions don't concern me.

[Alatar]

Sounds like a repackaging of the section in Unfinished tales so?