a little orientation needed

[DrFledermaus]

Hi there,

Could anyone tell me the difference between The Book of Lost Tales and The Silmarillion?
I've seen TBolT (both volumes) in a store but as well the book The Silmarillion.
Is The Silmarillion a part of the lost Tales?
When did this all happen? Could anyone give me a short timelime of the events?
I'm feeling pretty lost, I would be thankful for any help :-)

Nightwing

[Finduilas]

The Book of Lost Tales is part of the History of Middle-Earth, a series containing early drafts of the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion is more of a "finished" work.

[Michael Martinez]

The Book of Lost Tales is not an early draft of The Silmarillion. Nor does it contain early drafts of The Silmarillion.

The History of Middle-earth covers far more than just The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings.

The Book of Lost Tales is the very first fantasy book that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote. It was to be a collection of short stories comprising a mythology for England. He worked on it from 1916 through 1925, and then abandoned it. He reused many of the themes and characters when he began working the Silmarillion mythology, but a great deal was changed, including the concept of an independent, "English" mythology (based in England).

Christopher Tolkien published The Book of Lost Tales as the first two volumes of The History of Middle-earth series. It was his intention to show people how his father developed the stories of the Elves and, eventually, how he (Christopher) had assembled the published Silmarillion.

It is a mistake to regard The Book of Lost Tales as an early Silmarillion. J.R.R. Tolkien had something else in mind entirely when he wrote The Book of Lost Tales.

[Michael Martinez]

DrFledermaus,

I received your private message but if there is a way to respond privately it's not leaping out from the screen to me.

I don't know which biography you're reading, but whichever one it is, if it's saying that The Book of Lost Tales is an early version of The Silmarillion, it's wrong. Plain and simple. There was no Silmarillion while J.R.R. Tolkien was working on The Book of Lost Tales.

Here is Christopher Tolkien's explanation of the origins of The Silmarillion from The Shaping of Middle-earth, volume IV of The History of Middle-earth. He refers to earlier volumes in the series by putting a Roman numeral for volume number followed by a page number in parentheses.

I have earlier (III.3) given an account of this text, but I repeat the essentials of it here. On the envelope containing the manuscript my father wrote at some later time:

"Original 'Silmarillion'. Form orig composed c. 1926-30 for R.W. Reynolds to explain background of 'alliterative version' of Turin & the Dragon: then in progress (unfinished) (begun c. 1918 )."

The 'Sketch' represents a new starting-point in the history of 'The Silmarillion'; for while it is a quite brief synopsis, the further written development of the prose form proceeded from it in a direct line. It is clear from details that need not be repeated here that it was originally written in 1926 (after the [i] Lay of the Children of Hurin had been abandoned, III.3); but it was afterwards revised, in places very heavily, and this makes it a difficult text to present in a way that is both accurate and readily comprehensible....

What we refer to when we speak of The Silmarillion is a book compiled and published by Christopher Tolkien which bears no resemblance to The Book of Lost Tales, and which only approximates a work that J.R.R. Tolkien might have produced in the period writing from about 1955-67, that is, which is mostly compatible with the published Lord of the Rings text.

The Book of Lost Tales is a collection of stories which were intended to be a mythology for England. They were composed within the framework of a larger story in which an Anglo-Saxon mariner named Eriol or Aelfwine finds himself in Eldamar. The Elves tell him stories about his homeland (England) from a time when they lived there. The geography of the stories is the geography of England and Europe.

Sometime in the 1920s, J.R.R. Tolkien took two of the stories from The Book of Lost Tales, the "Turambar and the Foaloke" and "Tale of Tinuviel", and he wrote epic poems based on those stories. But he substantially revised the stories, and removed the connections to England. He also introduced many new elements.

The stories were essentially the same stories. But they were no longer a part of the proposed mythology for England. The individual tales themselves had become more important to Tolkien than his hope to create a faux English mythology.

R.W. Reynolds had been one of Tolkien's teachers, and they exchanged correspondence in 1926. Tolkien told Reynolds about his mythology for England, and shared some poems with him (most not published in The History of Middle-earth) which had been inspired by the mythology ( The Book of Lost Tales). Two of these poems were "Lay of the Children of Hurin" (the story of Turin and the dragon) and "Lay of Leithian" (the story of Tinuviel).

Tolkien sent Reynolds a brief synopsis of the larger story, which he now called "The Silmarillion" (the Silmarils were a part of the original mythology). Tolkien had begun the transitional process of taking the mythology out of England and putting it into a mythical or imaginary "past land".

He never returned to the geography of England. In fact, even in The Book of Lost Tales there were problems with the geography.

Around 1930 Tolkien rewrote his "Silmarillion", enlarging it and producing "Quenta Noldorinwa", which was the most complete version of the new mythology after the 1926 "Sketch". The "Quenta Noldorinwa" defines The Silmarillion which Christopher Tolkien published. That is, it establishes the format and order of stories that Christopher would eventually follow.

Tolkien did create a Beleriand map in the 1920s, probably around the time he wrote the Lays (according to Christopher). This "first Silmarillion map" represents the radical departure from the English mythology which Tolkien began in the mid-1920s. He did not abandon the whole concept entirely. Eriol is still mentioned in the title and at the end of "Quenta Noldorinwa". Eriol (or Aelfwine) would pop up now and again in future writings, but Tolkien never returned to the main story of The Book of Lost Tales.

When Tolkien begin developing the story that became The Hobbit around 1930, his borrowings from the older mythology were actually made from the "Quenta Noldorinwa", not from The Book of Lost Tales. In the mid-1930s Tolkien wrote a new Silmarillion text, "Quenta Silmarillion", which was longer than "Quenta Noldorinwa" but did not reach the end of the story. This "Quenta Silmarillion" was the embodiment of Tolkien's Eldarin mythology at the time The Hobbit was published. Tolkien stopped work on this version of the Eldarin mythology in 1937.

In late 1937 Tolkien was asked to write a sequel to The Hobbit. He reluctantly started work on the new story in December of that year. He had finished the main text for The Lord of the Rings by 1948. At that time he turned back to the Silmarillion and began updating some associated texts with the intention of making them compatible with the world of The Lord of the Rings. In 1947 Tolkien had also suggested to his publisher, Allen & Unwin, that The Hobbit be revised if it were ever going to be republished. The purpose of the revisions was to make it more compatible with The Lord of the Rings.

In 1950 Tolkien was working on the appendices for The Lord of the Rings. He was also trying to persuade Allen & Unwin to publish The Silmarillion with LOTR. They sent him galleys for a new Hobbit which had incorporated the suggestions he made three years earlier. Tolkien had forgotten about those suggestions, but seeing that they were being brought to print he immediately changed the material for the appendices to LOTR to be more compatible with the second edition of The Hobbit.

However, Tolkien's hope that The Silmarillion would finally be published were dashed when Allen & Unwin turned him down. He turned to another publisher, Collins, but they eventually also turned him down. So Tolkien went back to Allen & Unwin in 1951 and they agreed to publish just The Lord of the Rings. He finished the book over the course of 1952-4 and it was published in three volumes in 1954-5.

Now, at this point, The Silmarillion started to look like a reality. People who read the third volume of LOTR saw the reference to it. Tolkien had cleverly mentioned the book in Appendix A, and his readers wanted to see the book. So now Allen & Unwin began pressuring Tolkien to finish The Silmarillion.

But what he did was start rewriting associated texts. At some point in the late 1950s Tolkien did begin writing a new "Quenta Silmarillion" as well, but this one didn't even get as far as what is generally referred to as the 1937 version. On the other hand, Tolkien continued to write associated "background" stories for both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. This was the period when he produced the stories published in Unfinished Tales.

One of those stories, "Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin", was the first part of what was intended to be an updated version of "The Fall of Gondolin". "The Fall of Gondolin" was one of the original Book of Lost Tales stories, but except for brief summations in "Quenta Noldorina", "Quenta Silmarillion", and a few annals Tolkien had compiled, the story of Gondolin had never been fully retold the way the stories of Turin and Tinuviel had been.

During these years Tolkien also wrote "Narn i Chin Hurin", which was the third version of the story of Turin. The Narn was his most complete retelling of any of the stories which originated in The Book of Lost Tales.

In 1965 Ace Books in America published an unauthorized edition of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien had to update The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in order to secure a new copyright. The new editions brought him to the attention of a wider and younger audience than had read him before. He was inundated with questions about the world of The Lord of the Rings and he soon entered a more philosophical period of his life in which he pondered many issues.

The result of this last phase of Tolkien's life was an intention to wholly rewrite the Silmarillion legends and make them more scientifically acceptable. He never finished that task, and when he died he left behind several versions of the stories which in his mind had comprised the Silmarillion mythology.

Christopher Tolkien had to use material from The Book of Lost Tales, the 1937 "Quenta Silmarillion", some of the associated texts from the 1940s and 1950s, and the last "Quenta Silmarillion" of the 1950s to produce the published Silmarillion.

The published book is an amalgamation of traditions which evolved over the course of decades. It represents only an approximation of what J.R.R. Tolkien might have produced before he revised The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in 1965.

The The Book of Lost Tales is therefore more closely related to the published book than it is to what J.R.R. Tolkien eventually intended to publish. But The Book of Lost Tales is only a source for material used by Christopher Tolkien, it is not an early version of the book that Christopher published. That book originated with Christopher Tolkien himself, and is simply his vision (in the 1970s) of what could be produced from his father's papers.

The stories in The Book of Lost Tales bear little resemblance to the stories of The Silmarillion. There are so many briefer stories in BOLT which have vanished, and many which appeared in The Silmarillion which simply didn't exist in BOLT. It's not like J.R.R. Tolkien took the original BOLT texts and revised them time and again. He didn't. He abandoned them in favor of new texts, new versions of the older stories, and he abandoned even those newer versions in favor of yet newer versions of the stories.

[Inoldonil]

The biography he read might have been Architect of Middle-earth from the Running Press (I always forget the author). One can learn alot from that book, such as the tragic story of Beren, Luthien and her brother Thingol, or about the Mithrandir (Hobbits).

[Michael Martinez]

Please, tell me you're joking.

[Captain Stern]

but Thingol is Luthien's father not her brother.

[Michael Martinez]

Yes, we know the relationship between Thingol and Luthien. I am stunned to hear that someone may have published a book in which the relationship is so perverted.

[Captain Stern]

I curse thee thrice and doom you to be smitten when cometh he who bares my name on the dark wings of night...

[Inoldonil]

I'm sorry to say that I'm not Michael, the book is in my possession. You can imagine the horrible influence it had. When I first got it I had not read the Silmarillion! It didn't take much reading on the internet to figure out the flaws right away. The book is on Amazon.com if you care to take a look.