The Book of Lost Tales was the first major work of imagination by J.R.R. Tolkien, begun in 1916-17 when he was twenty-five years old and left incomplete several years later.  It stands at the beginning of the entire conception of Middle-earth and Valinor, for the Lost Tales were the first form of the myths and legends that came to be called The Silmarillion.  Embedded in English legend and English association, they are set in the narrative frame of a great westward voyage over the Ocean by a mariner named Eriel (or Ǽlfwine) to Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Isle, where Elves dwelt; from them he learned their true history, The Lost Tales of Elfinesse.  In the Tales are found the earliest accounts and original ideas of Gods and Elves, Dwarves, Balrogs, and Orcs; of the Silmarils and the Two Trees of Valinor; of Nargothrond and Gondolin; of the geography and cosmography of the invented world.

The Book of Lost Tales will be published in two volumes; this first part contains the Tales of Valinor, and the second will include Beren and Lúthien, Túrin and the Dragon, and the only full narratives of the Necklace of the Dwarves and the Fall of Gondolin.  Each tale is followed by a commentary in the form of a short essay, together with the texts of associated poems; and each volume contains extensive information on names and vocabulary in the earliest Elvish languages.  Further books in this series are planned to extend the history of Middle-earth as it was refined and enlarged in later years, and will include the Long Lays of Beleriand, the Ambarkanta or Shape of the World, the Lhammas or Account of Tongues, annals, maps, and many other unpublished writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Christopher Tolkien, who like his father formerly taught at Oxford University, has previously edited both The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.  He now lives in France, where he is at work on the vast labor of editing his father's remaining papers.


"Lost Tales (Book 1) is a highly intersting and valuable book in a variety of ways.  It affords us an almost over-the-sholder view into the evolving creative process and genius of J.R.R. Tolkien in a new exciting aspect, not seen before.  In addition, it gives us much information and rish detail, often highly illuminating, that was later to be greatly compressed or passed over in the published Silmarillion.  Further, it sheds much new light on the way in which Tolkien's mythology was intended in its original conception as a mythology for England, the basis for which was not easily seen in earlier published writings.  Two other aspects are additionally seen.  There is new linguistic information, not known before.  The superb, sensitive, and extremely helpful commentary and editing done by Christopher Tolkien makes all this possible."
- Glen H. GoodKnight, Editor of Mythlore and Founder of The Mythopoeic Society